Formation: The California Project The original members of California Guitar Trio met on the series of
Robert Fripp's
Guitar Craft courses in England in 1987. The three original members—Paul Richards of
Salt Lake City,
Utah, Bert Lams of
Affligem, Belgium, and Hideyo Moriya of
Tokyo, Japan—toured as part of Robert Fripp and The
League of Crafty Guitarists. After completing the 1991 tour of Europe with the League of Crafty Guitarists, Fripp asked Lams to write down a list of musical aims, materials, strategy, and possible collaborators for what was called the California Project. Lams named two other Guitar Craft students as potential collaborators who would be willing to move temporarily to Los Angeles to work with him on this project based out of his home: Richards and Moriya. Thus the California Project ultimately became the California Guitar Trio. The first official performance of the California Guitar Trio took place on February 7, 1991. They continue to play in the New Standard Tuning Several recordings of those performances are available through Fripp's DGMLive website.
First albums on DGM Records In 1991, the CGT self-released their self-titled demo album, recorded in Bert Lams' home just outside Hollywood, California. The recordings on this release were remastered by Tony Arnold and augmented with two additional tracks to form their first CD released on Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile record label (now Inner Knot Records), the 1993 album
Yamanashi Blues, In 1995, the trio were invited by physicist and Nobel Laureate
Murray Gell-Mann to record at his residence near Lamy, New Mexico. The resulting album
Invitation includes pieces that were inspired by the landscape ("Train to Lamy Suite"), and arrangements of pieces inspired by their surroundings, such as the theme from "
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "
Apache". Later in 1995, Fripp asked the trio to be the opening act for King Crimson. CGT opened for King Crimson for more than 130 shows in the US, Europe and Japan, exposing their music to a global audience. A sample of these performances were released on their album
An Opening Act. In 1998, CGT released
Pathways, in similar format to the first two albums, with combinations of original compositions, arrangements of classical pieces, and surf guitar songs.
Collaborative era In 1999, the trio began touring with bassist and Stick player
Tony Levin whom they had met on their tours with King Crimson. Levin appears on the CGT albums
Rocks The West and
Monday Night in San Francisco, and contemporaneously invited CGT to play his album
Waters of Eden. Other collaborators of the time included saxophonist Bill Janssen and percussionist Jarrod Kaplan. In 2001, CGT toured with Tony Levin and King Crimson drummer
Pat Mastelotto. After the tour, they released a live recording from this tour (
Live at The Key Club) and recorded the album
CG3+2 in Austin, Texas with Levin and Mastelotto. 2001 also saw the release of
10 Christmas Songs, which has accounted for some of the most popular CGT renditions on streaming services such as
Spotify and
Pandora (streaming service). In August 2004, they released
Whitewater, produced by Tony Levin. It features mainly original works of the CGT, offset by a circulation arrangement of a Bach prelude and a
mashup of "
(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" with
The Doors' "
Riders on the Storm." During this period, CGT began touring with their own sound engineer, Tyler Trotter. Trotter would often accompany the trio on melodica during live improvisations and performances of
Tubular Bells. The next studio release by CGT was 2008's
Echoes, with reworkings of other artists' songs, such as
Pink Floyd's Echoes,
Tubular Bells by
Mike Oldfield,
Music For a Found Harmonium, and
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which became a staple of their live performances. This was followed in 2010 by
Andromeda, the first CGT album with all original compositions. Trotter served as co-producer and engineer of both albums.
Montreal Guitar Trio In 2009, CGT performed their first shows with the . The album
Montreal Guitar Trio + California Guitar Trio captures these first live performances, with each trio performing their own works and playing as a sextet for the encore. They toured together on a shared bill, and in 2019 recorded
In A Landscape, showcasing all six musicians playing together as a single ensemble.
2012 to present The 2012 release,
Masterworks, is an all classical music compilation featuring music by
Beethoven,
Bach,
Vivaldi,
Rossini and
Arvo Pärt. Guitarist
Fareed Haque played on Vivaldi's "Winter", and Tony Levin played upright bass and cello on four tracks. The next album was the 2016 release of
Komorebi, which was the first CGT album to utilize crowdfunding to offset the production costs. The album is notable for its purely acoustic sound, whereas most previous CGT recordings featured some use of audio effects, amplification, loops and synthesized sounds integrated with acoustic guitars. It was recorded by Tom Griesgraber in his Encinitas, California studio. Mastering for this album was done by Brian Lucey, another
Guitar Craft student and notable mastering engineer and producer. Their latest studio album is 2020's
Elegy, and a subsequent tour was planned and later rescheduled as a result of the global
COVID-19 pandemic. The group resumed touring in July 2021 as an opening act for King Crimson, followed by a brief tour of the US in the fall of 2021. ==Members==