Vic Juris (1953-)

Victor E. Jurusz aka Vic Juris is one of the greatest guitar improviser of the last 30 years. He managed to stay just "under the radar" all this time but fortunately, most jazz musicians know and respect him.

Vic started to play guitar around age 10, inspired by rock and roll legend Chuck Berry. He was self taught and played in many local rock and R&B bands (in his native New Jersey state) as soon as he could.

Not long after, Juris discovered jazz and classical music : from then on, it was a love for jazz that fired him up!

Vic's musical work is always impeccable: a very fluid approach to harmony and accompaniment, great writing style, a nice "blend" withing the band, phenomenal chops, unique phrasing, advanced rhythmic ideas and concepts for improvisation, etc.

It's obvious that, even though he's not very well know to the public, Vic's musicianship allowed him to play with (and I should say, accompany) many great jazz artists in the late 1970's and on. victor juris

Perhaps the most notable works of his career are with the David Liebman Group, which Vic Juris joined in 1991. This band really is incredible: it's a "working group" which has become rare in the jazz world. I once attended their concert and they played amazingly great music: So much energy!

See this page for more info on the David Liebman Group.

I personally believe that Vic Juris joining this band was probably a very important career move. It seems like he learned a lot and could (finally) contribute his immense talent and creativity to a band of other astounding players...

Compositionally, in improvisation, in comping and in
"band chemistry" in general, it's the best I've heard Vic play!

oh yeah...

... Vic is also part of Gary Peacock's band since 1994 (!)

Video, Licks and Transcriptions

Get transcription excerpt from this video HERE

More Transcriptions

Highly recommend book : Modern Chords (by Vic Juris). Helped my comping tremendously in :

Learning triads (and inversions),
Stock drop2 and drop3 voicings,
Moving hybrid structures through keys,
Triads over bass notes,
Polychords,
more...

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