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 dazzling and 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 the extraordinary originality of his

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 groundbreaking

new album, State Of Nature (his first mainstream release in over a decade, and his debut for the Mack Avenue label),

Recording at Tarpan Studios in Northern California allowed Stanley to take time off for retreats to beautiful Santa Cruz and surrounding areas, where he immersed himself in nature awareness courses. The resulting music finds 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. Stanley also features the cello work of 19 year-old Meta Weiss, a classically trained musician whom he once tutored as a child in jazz and improvisation. He also includes three short pieces called "Mind Games" - mini canons, palindromes and interludes (inspired by those that Earth Wind & Fire slipped into classic albums such as That's the Way of the World) that gave him an opportunity to include some musical ideas on the album without changing its focus.

State Of Nature also includes a return to piano. That Stanley is also a pianist may be surprising, but it was his first instrument as a child because there was one in the house. "My sister says I was messing around with it as young as 3. I composed my first song at 5 and I started lessons around age 7. I didn't start on guitar until I was 11. Piano was a natural instrument for me. I find that when I sit at the piano, I make music. But I don't have the same training as I have on guitar. So that's always been intimidating. I realized that for my own personal development, I had to get out of my comfort zone and overcome my fear of performing on piano. There are aspects of my music that live in the piano. If I want those elements, I have to go there to get them."

To describe Stanley Jordan is to think of him as a world-class musician who marches in all aspects of his life to the beat of his own drum. He is a progressive thinker with goals and ideas that stretch far beyond record deals, fortune or fame.

Standards Volume 1 (1986) where Stanley made the bold statement that songs by the likes of Stevie Wonder and the Beatles deserved recognition as standards as much as chestnuts like "Georgia On My Mind." He followed that with the band album Flying Home (1988) and an especially edgy album titled Cornucopia (1990, a Grammy nominee in the Best Pop Single category for the title track), half of which was straight ahead jazz recorded live and the other half, multi-dimensional originals recorded in the studio. Still later in 1994, after a move to Arista Records (then-helmed by pop music maverick Clive Davis), he recorded the bracingly eclectic Bolero album, featuring covers of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon," Jimi Hendrix's "Drifting," his original "Plato's Blues" and the CD's centerpiece, a 17-minute arrangement of Ravel's "Bolero" broken up into rock, African, Latin, "groove" and industrial versions.

Frustrated with the demands of the commercial music industry, among other things, Jordan went into a self-imposed exile from the rat race in the `90s that included a retreat to the mountains of the Southwest. He re-emerged with a new life's direction. "Most people - if and when they find their calling - come to see themselves in some sort of service capacity," he states. "Right now I feel a strong desire to bring my music to the people not just for entertainment, but also for inspiration and healing." Though he maintains a busy international touring schedule, his broader interests stretch into the studies of Music Therapy and Sonification. He also owned and operated the Sedona Books and Music Store in Arizona. Before the completion of State Of Nature, he recorded several independent CDs, including Ragas (a collaboration with musicians from India featuring Jay Kishor on sitar) and Relaxing Music for Difficult Situations I, an audio extension of his Music Therapy interests.