Sean McGowan
Guitarist • Educator
Denver CO • 303-562-8110
Sean McGowan
His most recent recording is Portmanteau (2023), which features timeless jazz standards & songs from great American composers arranged for solo guitar.
Sean is an avid arts educator and currently serves as Professor of Music for the Music & Entertainment Industry Studies department at the University of Colorado Denver, one of the largest contemporary music programs in the country. He earned a DMA in Guitar Performance from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and has conducted workshops at colleges and guitar organizations throughout the country. He has also presented and performed at the Jazz Education Network conference in New Orleans, the International Symposium for the Performing Arts Medicine Association in Aspen, CO, and numerous College Music Society national and regional conferences. Sean is a strong advocate for injury prevention and health education for musicians, and his workshops incorporate a holistic approach to playing. His new book, The Holistic Guitarist, will be published by String Letter Media/Hal Leonard and available in early 2025.
For several years, Sean has been a contributing editor and educational advisor for Acoustic Guitar magazine. He is the author of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Solos (Hal Leonard) and the String Letter Media book/video instruction methods The Acoustic Jazz Guitarist, Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Essentials, and Holiday Songs for Fingerstyle Guitar. Sean has also produced over a dozen courses for TrueFire, covering the topics of fingerstyle jazz, improvisation, and comping (available at TrueFire.com) In 2024, he released a comprehensive Solo and Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar course with ArtistWorks (Artistworks.com)
Sean McGowan’s mastery is second to none; he is a beautiful, creative, and exquisite player in the league of the great masters of fingerstyle jazz guitar.
Sean’s impressive style is so musical. You are transported by his selection of songs; but within the compositions is a masterful guitarist using multi faceted guitar arrangements at the same time, creating a single guitar orchestra!
An emerging artist of considerable depth…
Playing the blues, standards or bebop anthems, fiery 16th note lines or suspended harmonic constructs, Sean McGowan has found his niche amongst the best jazz guitar soloists.
Though he is not a household name in the guitar world, he definitely deserves to be. His sense of harmony and amazing technique are world class – he is an inspiration to any serious guitarist.
Really stunning…a non-guitarist will never realize just how much is going on, but we guitarists will constantly ask ourselves, ‘How did he do that?
Few pleasures equal that of watching a gifted musician hit the track and just sail on out there. You’ll hear a lot of tradition in Sean McGowan’s guitar: Christian, Burrell, Farlow, Pass. You’ll also hear the sound of a musician finding the groove…his groove.
Sean McGowan is the most promising young solo guitarist I have ever heard. His first CD, River Coffee, paints a broad, beautiful picture of his enormous virtuosity, unrelenting musicality, playful sense of humor and remarkable knowledge of musical history. Guitarists will weep yet laugh with delight as they try to figure out what he is doing, and history will remember Sean as one of the most important guitarists of his generation.
