Two Way Street Coffee House--Jim Kanas

Jim Kanas is a guitarist from Northern Illinois. As a teenager Jim studied classical music and jazz improvisation and through educational and other venues found himself in the company of many jazz performers and educators including Pat Metheny, George Benson, Gary Burton and Stan Kenton to name a few. Also, at that time Jim was performing with then neighboring high school student/saxophonist Bill Evans sat-in with veteran blues man Eddy Clearwater. Jim won consecutive awards as a jazz guitarist in the Chicago land area and then later pursued his love and “hobby” of playing bluegrass, folk and traditional music. He then once again found himself surrounded by and jamming with influential musicians such as Steve Goodman, Corky Siegel, the Nashville Cats, Allison Krause, Harvey Ried, Jethro Burns and others. Jim broadened out his performance base to include pedal steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, harmonica, mandolin, dobro and vocals and toured regionally as a sideman with many country-oriented groups.

Jim earned a unique interdisciplinary music performance degree from Northern Illinois University in contemporary guitar skills, commercial music and American folk instruments. Jim Kanas’ professional collaborations have included concerts, recordings and/or performances with other Midwest musicians such as harmonica/pianist, Howard Levy; violinists, Johnny Frigo, Randy Sabien and Peter Ostroushko; mandolinist, Don Stiernberg; bassist, Larry Gray; blues man, Eddy Snow; guitarists, Muriel Anderson and Fareed Haque; percussionist, Rubén P. Alvarez and others. Jim now spends much time as an artist-in-residence throughout Illinois with the Illinois Arts Council and other cultural arts organizations. He is an Illinois Arts Council Artstour artist and performs and records regularly as a soloist (singer/multi-instrumentalist), with the Jim Kanas Trio (folk/bluegrass/western swing) and with the Jim Kanas Jazz Quartet.

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