John McLaughlin

Born in Doncaster, Yorkshire in England, John McLaughlin moved to the US in 1969 to join Tony Williams' group Lifetime. He subsequently played with Miles Davis on his landmark albums In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew (which has a track named after him), On The Corner, Big Fun (where he is featured soloist on Go Ahead John) and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. McLaughlin returned to the Davis band for one recorded night of a week-long club date, which was released as part of the album Live/Evil.

McLaughlin's 1970s electric band, the The Mahavishnu Orchestra, which performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused eclectic jazz and rock with eastern and Indian influences. This band established fusion as a new and growing style within the jazz and rock worlds. After the Mahavishnu Orchestra, McLaughlin formed the acoustic group Shakti. This group combined Indian music with elements of jazz and thus may be regarded as a pioneer of world music. It featured L. Shankar (violin), Zakir Hussain (tabla), T.H. Vikku Vinayakram (ghatam) and earlier Ramnad Raghavan (mridangam). John was the first westerner to attain any acclaim performing Indian music for Indian audiences.
Recently he has toured with Remember Shakti. In addition to original Shakti member Zakir Hussain, this group has also featured eminent Indian musicians U. Srinivas, V. Selvaganesh, Shankar Mahadevan, Shivkumar Sharma, and Hariprasad Chaurasia.

In 1973 he collaborated with Carlos Santana, also a disciple of Sri Chinmoy, on an album of devotional songs, Love Devotion Surrender, which included recordings of Coltrane compositions including A Love Supreme. He has also worked with the jazz composers Carla Bley and Gil Evans. 1979 saw the formation of the short-lived Trio of Doom, in which McLaughlin teamed up with Jaco Pastorius (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). Also in 1979 he teamed up with flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía and Larry Coryell (replaced by Al Di Meola in the early 1980s) as the Guitar Trio, the virtuoso talents of all three musicians equally on display. The Trio, again featuring McLaughlin along with de Lucía and Di Meola, reunited in 1996 for a second recording session and a world tour.

His latest recording projects have been a ballet score, Thieves and Poets, released in 2003 along with arrangements for classical guitar ensemble of favorite jazz standards, a three DVD instructional video on improvisation, and a hard bop/jazz fusion album entitled Industrial Zen, released in June 2006.

Kevin Eubanks

Kevin Tyrone Eubanks was born on November 15, 1957 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eubanks is a well known American jazz guitarist, having been the leader of the popular Tonight Show Band with host Jay Leno since 1995. He played with Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Slide Hampton, and Sam Rivers before starting to lead his own groups in 1983. Like his brother Robin Eubanks, a jazz trombonist, he has played and recorded with with Dave Holland. In 2005, Eubanks received an honorary doctorate degree from the Berklee College of Music, of which he is an alumnus.