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Once a musician, always a musician. At 71, jazz guitarist Mike Stern is still jetsetting to perform around the world.

Photo by Sandrine Lee

The jazz-guitar virtuoso’s new record Echoes and Other Songs shines bright amidst some major—and challenging—turning points in his life.

It was around 8 p.m. and, after enduring a severely delayed flight from Europe, Mike Stern had finally arrived home to New York City. He was overseas for a run of marathon three-and-a-half-hour shows in Munich and Budapest, where he shared the stage with fellow guitar virtuoso Al Di Meola on the Mandoki Soulmates’ A Memory of Our Future album release concert.

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Rig Rundown: Steve Vai [2023]

Come on down to the crossroads—or the CMA Theatre in Nashville—as we walk through the jaw-dropping rig of devilishly talented shredder Steve Vai.

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When Louis Cato received this Univox LP-style as a gift in high school, it needed some major TLC. A few years later, it got some practical upgrades and now makes regular appearances with Cato on The Late Show.

Photo by Scott Kowalchyk

The self-described “utility knife” played drums with John Scofield and Marcus Miller and spent time in the studio with Q-Tip before landing on Stephen Colbert’s show as a multi-instrumentalist member of the house band. Now, he’s taken over as the show’s guitar-wielding bandleader and is making his mark.

It’s a classic old-school-show-biz move: Bring out the band, introduce them one by one, and build up the song to its explosive beginning. It’s fun, dramatic, audiences love it, and that’s how every The Late Show with Stephen Colbert taping starts.

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