"Composers & Computers" is back: Stanley Jordan, computer musician

Composers & Computers

Stanley Jordan. Innovator of the two-handed touch technique to coax a sweet, percussive sound out of an electric guitar. After graduating from Princeton University in 1981, he went on to become an acclaimed jazz musician known for his guitar pyrotechnics.

He’s played on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He’s been nominated for four Grammy awards. His debut album, Magic Touch, sat atop the Billboard jazz charts for more than 11 months. He’s played to audiences around the world, crossing genres with virtuosity and a hunger for musical adventure.

But forty-five years ago, if you were looking for Stanley Jordan on any given midnight, you might just find him in a sub-basement laboratory in the Engineering Quadrangle. Because his passion at the time, the thing that attracted him to Princeton in the first place, was computer music.

This new, second season of “Composers & Computers” tells the three-part story of Stanley Jordan’s time at Princeton, and how, despite years of touring and building his reputation as a jazz master, he never really stopped being a computer musician.