Manos Kourtis - Planet Earth (2020)

Manos Kourtis was born in Thessaloniki of Greece on the 4th of August 1980. From a very young age he showed his interest in music. This automatically drove him to private lessons, learning the classical guitar at the age of 9, with Michael Hatzianastasiou.
At the age of 15 he recorded his first album, “Forever”, with his band “Creation’s Ode”.
By the age of 16 he had become a well known guitar player in his home town, collaborating with several artists of pop, rock, metal and Greek traditional music.
At the age of 18 he met Vaggelis Tsotridis, with whom he had private lessons in jazz guitar. In the same period, he studied classical harmony at the conservatorium of Kostas Matsigkos. He completed his studies in 2005 and received his diplomas in Classical Harmony and Electric Guitar.
All over the years he’s worked with several famous singers and musicians of his country.
While building his career, he is also teaching jazz harmony and guitar at music schools and conservatoriums. At the same time, he is playing at concert halls, giving a lot of seminars and recording several albums all over Greece.
In 2006 he was encouraged by Vaggelis Tsotridis to take the exams at the University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which he passed with high grades and studied there for the next years. Meanwhile he was taking classes of jazz music with worldwide known musicians, such as Jim Hall, Pat Metheny, Mike stern, John Scofield, John Ambercrombie, Joshua Redman, Charlie Haden, etc.
He graduated in 2011 with the title of Jazz Harmony specialized in Jazz Guitar.
All these years, his need to express his love in music, has made him compose several albums and create studies of music, having as a main goal to find and express his personal innerself.
Today Manos Kourtis is a teacher and composer, with his own albums, based on his personal musical forms, always searching new paths in music harmonies and forms, in order to develop his own style.

Will Brahm is a Los Angeles based guitarist and composer, and a 2019 Herbie Hancock International Guitar competition semi finalist. He received his bachelors of music in Jazz Guitar Studies at California Sate University Long Beach, where he was a five time consecutive recipient of the “K-jazz” scholarship. Will has performed, recorded, and worked with artists such as Arturo Sandoval, the New West Guitar Group, Gordon Goodwin’s “Big Phat Band,” Kim Richmond, Otmaro Ruiz, Sara Gazarek, Jane Monheit, and Gretchen Parlato. Will has toured with The New West Guitar Group across the United States and to Malasia and the Philippines, and toured with his own original music across the United States and to Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Turkey. Recent albums of his include the 2017 release of his world original music ensemble “Homenaje,” the 2018 release of his duet album “Will Brahm & Lia Booth,” and the 2019 release of his most recent album under his own name, “Venture Atlas.”
Will draws from a number of musical backgrounds from all over the world, giving his original compositions the combination of singing melodies, rich dense harmonic variations, and diverse exciting rhythmic motion. His 2019 album release “Venture Atlas” contains all original compositions of his, and he is joined by Chris Wabich on drum set and percussion, Diego Alvarez on percussion, Ahmet Türkmenoğlu on bass, and Katisse Buckingham on flute. Will Brahm is a Los Angeles based guitarist and composer, and a 2019 Herbie Hancock International Guitar competition semi finalist. He received his bachelors of music in Jazz Guitar Studies at California Sate University Long Beach, where he was a five time consecutive recipient of the “K-jazz” scholarship. Will has performed, recorded, and worked with artists such as Arturo Sandoval, the New West Guitar Group, Gordon Goodwin’s “Big Phat Band,” Kim Richmond, Otmaro Ruiz, Sara Gazarek, Jane Monheit, and Gretchen Parlato. Will has toured with The New West Guitar Group across the United States and to Malasia and the Philippines, and toured with his own original music across the United States and to Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Turkey. Recent albums of his include the 2017 release of his world original music ensemble “Homenaje,” the 2018 release of his duet album “Will Brahm & Lia Booth,” and the 2019 release of his most recent album under his own name, “Venture Atlas.”