Two years after they recorded Friday Night in San Francisco, John McLaughlin, Al di Meola and Paco de Lucía reunited for another set of acoustic guitar trios, Passion, Grace and Fire, If this can be considered a guitar "battle" (some of the playing is ferocious and these speed demons do not let up too often), then the result is a three-way tie. This guitar summit lives up to its title.

John Pizzarelli lays it all out in the title of his 2015 album: this tribute to Paul McCartney is designed for play in the smoky late-night hours, when everything turns sweet and mellow. Furthermore, this is a tribute to McCartney, not the Beatles. There isn't a Fab song to be found here, as Pizzarelli focuses entirely on Paul's solo work (for these intents and purposes, this includes Wings records), concentrating on the '70s but also sliding McCartney's Great American Songbook wannabe "My Valentine" into the mix. Pizzarelli digs up a few other obscurities – the early Wings song "Some People Never Know," the Speed of Sound deep cut "Warm and Beautiful" – and he also plays around with expectations, making "Let 'Em In" swing like mad and relaxing "Hi Hi Hi" so it doesn't rock, it grooves. He also invites Michael McDonald to sing on "Coming Up," which swaggers like Sinatra in Vegas, but for as delightful as that is, the key to the record's success is Pizzarelli himself, who delivers upon the laid-back promise of the title but is savvier than he needed to be, which is why Midnight McCartney satisfies.

Beatles fans love to explain that the key to the successful partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney was their contrasting songwriting personalities – Lennon was the tongue in cheek sardonic wit, McCartney the earnest balladeer. On John Pizzarelli Meets the Beatles, a sharply conceived tribute which sets the duo's classics in a jazz trio with big-band arrangements, the singer/guitarist hits the mark more often when he's taking on the Lennon persona. He approaches "Cant' Buy Me Love," "When I'm 64," and "Get Back" with a playful wink, jumping off his speedy melody lines and the rising brass sections for extended improvisational tradeoffs with pianist Ray Kennedy, and adding colorful touches like scatting and even ad libbing his own lyrical verses based on the originals.

Following the extraordinary success of guitar virtuoso Pasquale Grasso’s digital showcase series, which launched in 2019 and includes Solo Standards, Solo Ballads, Solo Holiday, and tributes to jazz royalty Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Sony Music Masterworks is set to release Be-Bop!, a brilliant new tribute to be-bop pioneers Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. This will be the Italian-born Grasso’s sixth album for Masterworks. Be-Bop! kicks off in exhilarating fashion with Dizzy’s quintessential composition, “A Night in Tunisia,” originally composed in 1942 when he was a member of Benny Carter’s band and which marked the beginning of Gillespie’s unique blending of Afro-Cuban rhythms with American jazz…

With Solo Masterpieces, Grasso has gathered music from each of his first solo guitar EPs and melded them. The result is a masterful collection that allows audiences to revel in Grasso’s previous work whilst simultaneously creating an air of excitement for the music yet to be released. The series, which has received critical acclaim thus far, marks a turning point into the new decade and Solo Masterpieces is the encapsulation of the majesty within the music.

To many, Istanbul represents a place of longing, a place surrounded by myths and traditions, while others consider it a symbol for economic progress. Since the Gezi Park protests in 2013, Western Europe sees more in the picturesque metropolis by the Bosporus than just the Hagia Sofia and other cultural monuments. Social developments are also noticed. Guitarist Erkin Cavus spent many years of his life in the gigantic, crowded and often hectic city. He made his career there and played alongside famous artists before he moved to Germany about four years ago.

Speaking of Now finds guitarist Metheny leading a retooled Pat Metheny Group; in addition to longtime core members, keyboardist Lyle Mays and bassist Steve Rodby, the Group now includes drummer Antonio Sanchez, trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu, and Richard Bona, who's best known as a bassist, but who functions primarily as the Group's percussionist/vocalist. The result is an exquisite album that features fresh new musical perspectives while losing none of the Group's familiar wide-ranging, melodic, always accessible sound. Most of the tracks on Speaking of Now were composed by Metheny and his longtime collaborator Mays, although three tracks were composed solely by Metheny. There's a buoyant feel to this album that is not to be confused with lightness. This is complex, intricately detailed music that reveals additional layers with each listening. Metheny seems to delight in discovering the myriad means by which his prodigiously accomplished bandmembers can provide coloration to the compositions, both within the larger group and in solo spotlights.

Johnny Henry Smith II, born June 25th 1922, became one of America's most revered cool jazz guitarist. This 4CD set features eight of Johnny Smith's most potent, dynamic and rewarding albums on which he served as band-leader, recorded for the Roost label between 1955 and 1960. Containing all of this most underrated Jazz master's finest compositions and performances, the collection will work equally well for those new to Smith's music and those who merely require a delightful reminder of his most extraordinary work and most unusual talent.

Larry Coryell will always be best known for arguably being the first fusion guitarist, but his career has been quite wide-ranging ever since the late '60s. On Shining Hour , he mostly sticks to jazz standards other than his own "Floyd Gets a Gig" and Brian Torff's "Apathy Rains." Several of the selections are identified with Miles Davis including "Nefertiti" and "The Sorcerer" but there are also hard swinging versions of "All the Things You Are" and "My Shining Hour." Coryell, whose playing works well in this (for him) rare setting although he is not really a boppish improviser, interacts with pianist Kenny Barron (who sometimes takes solo honors), bassist Buster Williams and drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith.

Although the rhythm section was more "modern" than he usually used (keyboardist Benny Aronov, bassist Malcolm Cecil, and Airto Moreira on drums and percussion), guitarist Jim Hall (who always had a harmonically advanced style anyway) has little difficulty adapting to the fresh setting. Highlights of the well-rounded CD reissue include Hall's "Simple Samba," "Baubles, Bangles and Beads," an unaccompanied "I Should Care," and Milton Nascimento's "Vera Cruz".

Though he has shown a mastery and affinity for both electric and acoustic axes, Tommy Emmanuel's Higher Octave debut, Midnight Drive, finds him focusing almost exclusively on warm yet frequently aggressive acoustic melodies, complemented here and there by the raw, plugged-in energy of Robben Ford and Larry Carlton. The overall mix is the kind that smooth jazz lovers find easy to swallow, but offers more bite and adventure than most like-minded releases in the genre. Smooth jazz radio may find an easy mark with a laid-back take of Sting's "Fields of Gold," but Emmanuel's other tracks dig deeper, showing off a stylistic chameleon drawing from the many phases of his career. His soft pop side comes out on power ballads "No More Goodbyes" and "Stay Close to Me," the latter reminding us why guest saxman Warren Hill's biggest hit to date was called "The Passion Theme." Emmanuel's more aggressive blues-rock side (honed no doubt by a few years in the progressive mid-'80s ensemble Dragon) emerges with Carlton's help on "Can't Get Enough." The striking contrast between the pastoral, folksy roads of "Drivetime" and the disc's best track, "Villa de Martin" best reflects the gamut of Emmanuel's approaches.

One of the dangers anytime an artist decides to forgo the organic approach and back his primary instrument with electronic effects is relying too much on the machinery. Fortunately, Ryo Kawasaki, as strong a producer as he is a lyrical electric guitar master, makes sure his silky urban rhythms on Sweet Life are simply an enhancement, rather than a burden, to his fluid lines. Whether the track is straight-out funk, smooth late-night seduction, or a loping ride like the title cut, his hypnotic synth lines simply set the mood. Kawasaki's plucky, winding way with a melody is textured over that, working its way toward varying degrees of emotional resonance. While the fully plugged-in mode carries the majority of the collection, Kawasaki earns his most memorable kudos for the simple and sparse acoustic gems, a lush cover of Janet Jackson's "Again" and on "Sweet Life," which improvises a flamenco-like edge over fingersnap percussion that sounds more real than machine-generated.