One of the most promising young guitar players in jazz in India, Jishnu Dasgupta brings a contemporary, adventurous sound to compositions jazz musicians have been playing for more than 60 years.
A jazz guitarist based in Bangalore, India, Jishnu Dasgupta is part of a younger breed of jazz musicians in India, making music that is forward-looking whilst being grounded in the jazz guitar tradition of classic jazz standards.
His accessible yet intense style of jazz guitar improvisation, fluid lyricism and ability to expand the given harmonic structure of how to play a jazz standard results in a jazz guitar style that takes hard-bop chromatic phrasing and turns it on its head.
He has played within the many different jazz guitar styles such as bebop jazz, jazz rock fusion guitar and smooth jazz guitar, and is well-known for his use of an 8 string guitar for jazz and in-depth exploration of advanced jazz chord harmony and jazz music theory in jazz standards.
Jishnu got his start as a young jazz guitarist in Bangalore, cutting his teeth playing bebop jazz with Indian music scene veteran Tony Das. Since then he has performed with a number of jazz musicians in India.
An experienced instructor of jazz guitar lessons with a dedicated following, Jishnu is also known for his vocal opposition to the popular belief that “learning jazz guitar seems tough on a good day, and impossible on a bad day”.
To dispel this persistent misconception, he has consistently worked at making learning jazz pedagogy more easily accessible, fun, easy to get started and more enjoyable through his free online jazz guitar lessons, master-classes and online workshops on how to start learning jazz guitar.
A self-confessed autodidact, Jishnu’s jazz guitar youtube lessons and articles on jazz guitar theory hint at an advanced understanding of music theory. His online guitar lessons often make references to the research of Dmitri Tymoczko, the musical analyses of Heinrich Schenker, and tonal frameworks of Neo-Riemannian music theory concepts.
As a jazz guitar teacher, one of Jishnu’s significant recent contributions to the online community of jazz guitarists has been his adaptation of classical Hanon etudes into an improvisational language and format suitable for jazz guitar improvisation.
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