A List
3/6/06

GUITAR WEEKEND AT SLU FEATURES ALLAN SLUTSKY

CANTON - Musician and author Allan Slutsky will be in residence at St. Lawrence University March 9 through 11, for its annual guitar weekend, featuring a number of events and presentations.

On Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m. in Gilbert Recital Hall, Griffiths Arts Center, Slutsky will give an informal lecture/performance, discussing the process of getting the widely acclaimed film Standing In The Shadows Of Motown made. This will be followed, at 9 p.m., by a screening of the film, with an introduction by Slutsky.

On Saturday, March 11, Slutsky will conduct a workshop from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the Underground, Noble Center, on playing pop and rhythm-and-blues. From 2 to 4 p.m., also in the Underground, he will conduct a workshop on playing musical theatre. Participants in the workshops should bring their own guitars.

All events are open to the public, free of charge; those interested in participating in workshops should phone 315-229-5184.

A Philadelphia-based musician and author, Slutsky graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 1978 and began a career performing, recording and arranging, on hundreds of record and jingle dates for major labels like RCA, Casablanca, Columbia and Warner Brothers, as well as working with McDonald's, Seafood Shanty and dozens of other commercial clients.

By the mid-80s, Slutsky was firmly entrenched as one of the "first call" guitarists in the Philadelphia area's theatre scene as well as in the showrooms of Atlantic City's biggest casinos. Over the next decade and a half, he performed in the orchestras of more than two dozen Broadway musicals, including Chicago, Mama Mia and Dreamgirls.

In 1983, Slutsky became a household name to guitarists when he penned the "Dr. Licks" guitar-transcription series that has been distributed throughout the world by Hal Leonard Publishing for the last two decades. In 1989, he published Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, a biography and accompanying CD package that chronicled the life and music of Motown bassist James Jamerson, as well as the rest of the bandmembers of the Funk Brothers, Motown's legendary studio band of the 60s. The book won the BMI/Rolling Stone Ralph J. Gleason Award for music book of the year. That led to an 11-year odyssey of seeking funding to make a movie that would bring the Funk Brothers' unforgettable tale to the big screen. In 2000, Standing In The Shadows Of Motown was shot in Detroit with the eight surviving members of the Funk Brothers. Slutsky functioned as a producer and music supervisor/arranger on the film which won Best Non-Fiction Film awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. He is also a Grammy recipient for his production work on the soundtrack CD for Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, which won a Best Compilation Soundtrack award.

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Music Ensembles at St. Lawrence