Last week I had the good fortune to open for guitarist Adam Rafferty who was performing for the Ohio Fingerstyle Guitar Club in Worthington Ohio. I would have dropped everything to see the show anyway but to be invited to play too was a real treat. I’ve reviewed Adam’s two most recent instructional DVD’s and spoken to him via email, but we’d never actually met before that evening.

I had between 15 and 20 minutes to perform before Adam, and chose to play four of my favorite pieces: Mercy Mercy Mercy (Joe Zawinul), Morning (Clare Fischer), Layover (Michael Hedges), and Linus & Lucy (Vince Guaraldi). The audience was largely made up of guitarists and they were very appreciative. I even heard someone exclaim “Nice!” during one of my tunes and I have to say, that little outburst really made me feel great and put me at ease! During intermission and after the show I met several members of the Ohio Fingerstyle Guitar Club and they were all great people. I hope to attend more of their events in the future.

Now, if you’ve seen Adam on YouTube, then you know that he’s a really fine player. But what you can’t see on the web is just what a fantastic performer he is. Adam was totally at home on stage and often made jokes or told stories as he introduced each song. His performance style really drew the audience in and created an intimate, lighthearted vibe. Several of his pieces have little audience participation sections in live performance that kept folks engaged. I don’t know if Adam has always been this good of a showman but I suspect his recent touring experiences with Tommy Emmanuel have helped him to sharpen this skill. He has certainly learned how to balance the elements of his show that impress guitarists with the ones that entertain mainstream audiences.

During the second half of the show I was asked to join Adam onstage for a couple of duets. Both of us have a background in jazz so we chose to perform “Tenor Madness” and “Autumn Leaves.” Adam is one a hell of a bebop player and tore up the changes. It’s hard to judge oneself in such situations, but I felt pretty good about my playing and was told afterward by guitarist Eric Loy that I “really held my own” during those numbers. Yay!

Behind the scenes Adam was down-to-earth and happy to chat with me during our down time. He also made sure to personally greet everyone who wanted to say hello after the show. I’m sure he won many new fans during the evening and will be around for many years to come as he continues to perform, teach, and entertain. Don’t miss him when he comes to your neck of the woods!

Sit back, relax, and be awestruck.

via Study Guides and Strategies

The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history.

1. Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!)
Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a problem was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and becomes a new one.

2. Visualize!
When Einstein thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible, including using diagrams. He visualized solutions, and believed that words and numbers as such did not play a significant role in his thinking process.

3. Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.
Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many “bad” ones. They weren’t afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.

4. Make novel combinations. Combine, and recombine, ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based came from the Austrian monk Grego Mendel, who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science.

5. Form relationships; make connections between dissimilar subjects.
Da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. This enabled him to make the connection that sound travels in waves. Samuel Morse invented relay stations for telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.

6. Think in opposites.
Physicist Niels Bohr believed, that if you held opposites together, then you suspend your thought, and your mind moves to a new level. His ability to imagine light as both a particle and a wave led to his conception of the principle of complementarity. Suspending thought (logic) may allow your mind to create a new form.

7. Think metaphorically.
Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them together was a person of special gifts.

8. Prepare yourself for chance.
Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. That is the first principle of creative accident. Failure can be productive only if we do not focus on it as an unproductive result. Instead: analyze the process, its components, and how you can change them, to arrive at other results. Do not ask the question “Why have I failed?”, but rather “What have I done?”

9. Have patience.
Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) is recognized as one of the 19th century’s greatest painters, and is often called the father of modern art, an avant garde bridge between the impressionists and the cubists. During his life he only had a few exhibitions though his influence on subsequent artists was great as an innovator with shape and form. His genius, however, was not evident until late in life. He was refused admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at age 22 and his first solo exhibition was at age 56. His genius was the product of many years’ practice and experimental innovation.

In accordance with the divine teachings the acquisition of sciences and the perfection of arts are considered acts of worship. If a man engageth with all his power in the acquisition of a science or in the perfection of an art, it is as if he has been worshiping God in churches and temples.

From the Baha’i Sacred Writings