loren conners

Connors often works in sweeping, lulling, minimalist waves of sound, but he also attacked the strings, as he is here in this 2017 photo from Brooklyn's ISSUE Project Room.

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Laboring under the radar for 40 years and afflicted by Parkinson's, the improvising guitarist is riding a wave of new and reissue recordings that may finally bring his blues-, jazz-, and Rothko-inspired music to more listeners.

"Working with Loren is, in some ways, not really 'working with Loren.' It's more like you're entering a space that you both occupy—not a place for conversation or exchanging pleasantries," says experimental musician Jim O'Rourke, describing his longtime musical relationship with guitarist Loren Connors. "More so than anyone I have worked with, it is a place with its own logic, its own sense of time, and no road map." Anyone who has witnessed one of Connors' performances can understand what O'Rourke, who has partnered with Connors in duos and as an engineer, is talking about.

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