BUDDY GUY @ MASSEY HALL - APRIL 5/08

“Buddy Guy is by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive. He really changed the course of rock and roll blues…Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others!” – Eric Clapton

Buddy Guy

Saturday, April 5, at 8:00 pm

Massey Hall / Toronto

Tickets: $69.50 to $49.50 – Call 416-872-4255 or visit the Roy Thomson Hall Box Office

www.masseyhall.com


For Immediate Release, Toronto, ON. March 11, 2008

American blues-rock legend Buddy Guy has been “singin’ the blues” for nearly five decades. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, winner of 23 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (more than any other blues artist), recipient of the prestigious Billboard Century Award, a pioneer of the fabled Chicago-style electric blues sound, and an inspiration to Hendrix, Clapton and many other '60s guitar greats, Buddy Guy has become an internationally celebrated symbol of the blues. He returns to Massey Hall on Saturday 5, April 5, 2008 at 8 pm for his fourth consecutive year, for what has become a much-anticipated and electrifying annual “Buddy’s Blues” experience. His dynamic performances are unmatched, whether onstage, or strolling into the audience to personally select a lucky lady to serenade.

George “Buddy” Guy was born July 30, 1936, in Louisiana, one of five children in a sharecropper's family and raised on a plantation some 200 kilometres northwest of New Orleans.

Buddy was seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar" – two strings secured to a piece of wood with his mother’s hairpins. It would be another decade before he would own a real guitar – a Harmony acoustic now proudly displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Buddy Guy is renowned for helping move the blues guitar into its post-modern era. His playing is legendary, and few blues musicians today can match his ability to turn a guitar solo into the quintessential blues statement. Also a passionately soulful singer and flamboyant showman, Buddy was featured in Martin Scorsese’s 2004 documentary film about the blues, Lightning in a Bottle.

He can also be heard on nearly 30 albums. The most recent, Can’t Quit the Blues, is a 3-CD box that spans his 50 years in music and includes six previously unreleased tracks, a 90-minute DVD documentary on his life and career, and performances from his years at the Montreux Jazz Festival beginning in 1974.

In 2003 Buddy was honoured with the coveted Medal of Arts, awarded by the President of the United States for his extraordinary contribution to the arts. The Chicago blues king is also the proprietor of Buddy Guy’s Legends, the premier blues nightclub in downtown Chicago, established in 1989. For more information, visit www.buddyguy.net.

This performance is part of "Share the Music", the Corporation’s Education and Outreach Program. One hundred and fifty complimentary tickets will be provided to under-served youth (age 13 – 18) to attend the concert and a pre-concert workshop led by Toronto-based blues musician Mark “Bird” Stafford. The Share the Music program aims to enrich and inspire young people through exposure to world-class performers and related educational activities. The program is sponsored by Sun Life Financial and supported by many individuals and organizations. For more information, please visit www.roythomson.com/shareMusic.cfm

MEDIA CONTACT:

Liz Parker
Publicity Manager
email: liz.parker@rth-mh.com


THE CORPORATION OF MASSEY HALL AND ROY THOMSON HALL, 60 Simcoe Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5J 2H5


---------------------------------------------