Imagine receiving an invitation to a gala featuring John Coltrane, Sigmund Freud, and Faust. Bruce Forman’s “The Red Guitar” is all that more. It draws on Forman’s decades of experience as a formidable jazz guitarist and his considerable skill as a storyteller and teacher, producing a work that is greater than the sum of its dazzling parts.
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A story in and about jazz, The Red Guitar showcases Bruce Forman’s genre—breaking inventiveness and his ability to improvise and create within a classical form. Enlisting the full power of the jazz idiom and integrating it with seasoned and provocative story-telling, he confronts the dilemma of artistic obsession face-to-face—by creating a work of art that simultaneously explores and demonstrates the hold that music has over its most ardent followers, the hold that poses itself as a life-or-death, must-be-solved-question to Forman and his ilk: “The Red Guitar. Do you play it…or does it play you?
A dazzling fusion of storytelling, musical theater, comedy, and jazz, acclaimed guitarist Bruce Forman brings his celebrated one-man show The Red Guitar to SandBox. After countless performances across the globe—from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Melbourne, Munich, and Denver—The Red Guitar can now be witnessed right here in Sand City with the legend himself - Bruce Forman.

Hailed by Guitar Player Magazine as “innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking,” Forman’s genre-bending performance enlists the power of jazz to spin an unforgettable tale filled with humor, passion, and improvisation. Inspired by iconic stories like The Red Shoes and The Red Violin, Forman explores the question that has long haunted him: Did I choose the music, or did the music choose me?
A master storyteller and virtuoso guitarist, Forman uses jazz as both subject and medium—creating a spontaneous, theatrical, and deeply personal reflection on life in and about music itself. A renowned session musician and composer, Forman has performed and recorded with legends such as Ray Brown and Bobby Hutcherson, and his playing can be heard on numerous film soundtracks, including Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.