Conversation: Mary Halvorson, Anthony Pirog, and Yasmin Williams with Nate Chinen

The guitar, as an instrument, speaks many languages,and in myriad dialects. It can be endlessly variable even in the hands of a single player. And yet there are some guitarists who bring such a personal touch and technique to their sound that they’re recognizable within a few bars of any tune. Such is the case with the three distinctive artists on this panel: Mary Halvorson, a MacArthur Fellow whose percussive attack on a Guild Artist Award archtop produces one of the most unmistakable timbres in modern music; Anthony Pirog, who as both a solo artist and a member of The Messthetics turns his Fender Jazzmaster into a vessel for liquid fire; and Yasmin Williams, who favors a SkyTop Grand Concert acoustic and an approach that pushes the fingerstyle folk tradition into revelatory new modalities. Nate Chinen, editorial director at WRTI and the author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, is no one’s idea of a guitarist — though the guitar panel he moderated last year was favorably received.