Before Marc Ribot made a name for himself as a pioneering force in NYC's downtown music scene, he began his guitar studies as a teenager with close family friends, the Father of Haitian classical guitar, Frantz Casséus (1915-1993). Casseus came to NYC from his native Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1946 with the ambition to compose distinctly Haitian classical guitar music, to fuse the European classical tradition with Haitian folk elements as Hector Villa-Lobos had done with his native Brazil's and as Béla Bartók had done with Hungarian folk songs. In an effort to preserve Frantz's musical legacy, Ribot edited a collection of Casseus' solo guitar compositions, and performed them on his 1993 album Marc Ribot Solo Guitar Works of Frantz Casseus - music he brings to SFJAZZ.
No guitarist has traveled a more circuitous creative path than Marc Ribot, a major force on the New York jazz scene since the mid-1980s. While often associated with the avant-garde, Ribot thrives in any musical context, contributing prominently to the work of Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, The Lounge Lizards, and Diana Krall, as well as Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's five-time GRAMMY Award-winning 2007 album Raising Sand. Applying his unorthodox technique and vast, percussive sonic palette to a mind-boggling array of musical realms, Ribot has delved into the classic compositions of the great Cuban sonero Arsenio Rodríguez with his Los Cubanos Postizos band, explored Albert Ayler's ecstatic free jazz forays with his power-packed trio, investigated country music in Nashville with Bill Frisell and Buddy Miller, unleashed scorching avant-rock with his trio Ceramic Dog, dug into bone-deep roots rock with Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo, and conjured the spirits in duo with jazz piano giant McCoy Tyner.