First up this time is Zee Avi.

This girl has a fantastic back story. I found out about her on youtube when she started posting simple her playing acoustic guitar infront of a webcam style videos, which was about 2 years ago. She's a girl from Malaysia who's got a cute face and a wonderful voice. Mid fall last year I got a message from her (as well as everyone else thats friends with her on youtube, so no i'm not special) saying she was going to be on Brushfires christmas album "This Warm December". Which I was prety stoked for. After that album was released on November 17th I found out that with Jack Johnsons help she would be recording her first album in the US under Brushfire Records, and she is now officially a Brushfire artist. She's been doin the odd show in L.A and New York, but no actual tours or anything yet. Heres a couple of her songs.

This first one is her first single "Bitter Heart" which includes an apearance by Matt Costa on Trumpet.



and this second one has a few songs in one video, which are the songs "Honey Bee" "Bitter Heart" "Kantoi" which I believe is a Malay folk song, and "Monte"



Second I think will be a composer. Joe Hisaishi.

Joe Hisaishi has been around for a pretty long time now, but being Japanese most people don't know who he is. His music is mostly heard in movie soundtracks, But then again there isn't really a big enough classical orchestra market to not sell your music for movies. His music was first seen in Studio Ghibli's 1986 hit movie "Kaze no Tani no Naushika" (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). Sinc that movie Hisaishi has been a constant contributer to Hayao Miyazaki's films, but he did lend his talents to other movies as well, like 1999's "Kikujiro". One of the best things about Joe hisaishi's music is his instrumental diversity with his orchestra. While all of his music can be listened to or performed solo on piano. He is known to use Chello's, Saxaphones, Violins, and Drums as leading instruments and does so quite often. So Here's a couple videos showing his music performed live, and don't blame me if they don't work, being foreign they quite often violate audio laws and stuff so they get takin off of youtube, and then re-uploaded by someone else.

First one is the theme song from the first movie I mentioned Nausicaa



Second one is "Summer" from the movie Kikujiro




And Third is Don Ross

I don't know what to say about Don Ross, so I'll just tell you two thing, He's Canadian, and is on of our top solo guitarists. Check him out, he's just so funky.

Michael Michael Michael



Loaded, Leather, Moonroof



Tight Trite Night with Andy Mckee (i'll talk about him next week)





And here's a bonus Canadian Guitarist, Kelly Valleau.

Kelly Valleau is a really good classical guitarist. He has near perfect flamenco picking and writes some really awesome covers.

Pink Floyd cover of "Another Brick in the Wall"



"Hommage to Barios"



and one more this one is an origional song of his that shows of his flamenco skills.

"Imperial March" (yeah I know awesome)