Rick Hannah jazz guitarist

Rick Hannah plays jazz guitar in a club in Ettlingen

Rick Hannah plays jazz guitar at Birdland59, a well known jazz club in Ettlingen, near Karlsruhe.
Photo © Willi Eisele

About Rick Hannah

Philadelphia-born musician Rick Hannah has been playing guitar since he was 12 years old.

He worked in Los Angeles in the 1970–1980s, playing blues, rock, funk and fusion; he toured Europe several times with drummer Alphonse Mouzon and organist Brian Auger, and then joined the “Billy Mitchell–John Bolivar Group”, recording the album Passion.

In 1996, having decided to dedicate himself to mainstream jazz: swing/bop/blues, he returned to the East Coast where, influenced by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, he developed the art of the Jazz Guitar Trio, with the guitar replacing the traditional piano in this format.

In France from 2005, he continued to concentrate on his new Trio, while creating and directing the “Guitar Big Band de Strasbourg”; and organized regular jazz nights in a Strasbourg café.

Brilliant practitioner of Solo Jazz Guitar, he favors intimate settings that promote greater interaction with the audience.

These days he performs primarily in France and Germany.

Mission Statement

» I consider myself a pop musician at heart: I consider all the music that I have played in my life, starting from Classic Rock to Funk to Blues to Jazz at one time or another, part of popular culture.

When I put Jazz in this category, I'm referring to Jazz up until the early 1960s – what I would call "Consonant Jazz". The main driving force of this music is melody, from which all the rest is derived: harmony, rhythm, structure and where applicable, artful lyrics.

My musical mission is to exploit these wonderful melodies, written by the many great composers of the 20th century, in order to keep this music alive and relevant.
—Rick Hannah