Bruce Bartlett is a Boston-based guitarist, composer and teacher. He has been a professor and clinician in the Berklee College of Music Guitar Department for 30 years.
Read a letter to Guitar Player Magazine from jazz teaching legend Charlie Banacos.
Bruce has taught groove ensembles in Italy, Argentina, Los Angeles, and on the Berklee campus in Boston. His band, the Bruce Bartlett Trio, has performed widely in the U.S. and internationally.
Bruce began his career as a recording session guitarist at the age of 19, working for producer Arthur Baker in New York City. He played rhythm guitar for several underground recordings for R&B artists in the early ’80s. More recently, he recorded a live performance DVD with John Blackwell (drummer for pop legend Prince) for Hudson Music. He also composed most of the material, along with being a featured soloist, for Modern Drummer Festival 2000 at Montclair University in New Jersey.
Bruce’s sideman and leader work includes performances at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Quebec Jazz Festival, and Indonesia Jazz Festival. Bruce has opened for Weather Report and Hiram Bullock, and performed with Chick Corea on Chick Corea Day, in Chelsea, MA, in 2001. He is now working on several new projects.