Steve Adelson is a New York-based jazz musician best known as one of the world's foremost performers on the Chapman Stick, the twelve string tapping instrument invented by Emmett Chapman. Adelson initially pursued a career in chemical engineering before his life took a turn during the counterculture of the 1960s, attending Woodstock and switching his major to music, spending his first 15 years as a guitar player influenced by rock and jazz acts like The Allman Brothers and Frank Zappa before moving into jazz guitar. He began his career as a guitarist, founding his Brooklyn, New York school, The Guitar Workshop, in 1977. During those early years he immersed himself in the New York jazz scene, sharpening his craft alongside established players and absorbing the vocabulary of straight-ahead jazz guitar before an unexpected discovery would redirect his entire musical path.
That turning point came in the early 1980s. While teaching and performing in the New York area with other guitar masters like Joe Pass, Jimmy Ponder and Jack Wilkins, Steve got his first introduction to the Stick through a meeting with Emmett Chapman at a guitar expo in 1983, and recognizing the great potential of the instrument, he purchased his first Stick in 1984, focusing his performance activities on it ever since. Approaching the instrument from a guitarist's perspective rather than a bassist's, as Chapman Stick pioneer Tony Levin did, Adelson developed a distinctly guitar-oriented style on the Stick, in contrast to Levin's more bass-driven approach. This distinctive voice on a rare instrument helped him carve out a singular identity in the jazz fusion world, and he became recognized as one of very few players to build a career centered almost entirely on the Stick.
Over the following decades Adelson built an international reputation as a performer, educator, and author. He performed at clubs, festivals and conventions all over the U.S., conducted seminars and workshops on the Stick in various U.S. cities and in Italy, and authored "Stickology, A guide to Playing the Chapman Stick," a comprehensive lesson book and DVD, earning a reputation as one of the finest Stick players and teachers in the world. He also released multiple recordings as a bandleader, and his contributions to jazz guitar were recognized when he was included in Scott Yanow's book "The Great Jazz Guitarists" alongside figures such as Django, Les Paul, Wes, and Metheny , notably as the only Stick player included in that collection . Long based on Long Island, he also produced the Long Beach, New York Jazz Fest for sixteen years , cementing his role as a fixture of the regional jazz community as both a performer and organizer.
Adelson remains active as a performer and teacher into the present day. He continues to perform locally on Long Island with his trio, joined by vibraphonist Bryan Carrott and drummer Frank Bellucci, a protege of Buddy Rich. He continues to teach students of all levels, with decades of experience passing on his knowledge of the instrument that defined his career, and by his own account he has kept practicing and performing without pause. His legacy rests on having helped legitimize the Chapman Stick as a genuine voice in jazz, proving that an instrument invented only a few decades ago could produce a lifetime body of serious, respected musicianship.
Wayne Dennon captured Steve Adelson in performance at one show back in 2008, a night preserved today through ten photographs in this archive. Those images, viewed by visitors 8197 times, stand as a small but enduring record of a musician who has spent more than four decades quietly redefining what a single stringed instrument can do, and they remain a fitting tribute within a collection dedicated to honoring the live music moments Wayne devoted his lens to capturing.
