About California Guitar Trio
California Guitar Trio is an acoustic–electric band formed in Los Angeles in 1991 with the aim of expanding the potential of acoustic guitars played in the New standard tuning introduced by Robert Fripp on Guitar Craft courses. The California Guitar Trio’s core lineup consisted of Paul Richards, Bert Lams, and Hideyo Moriya. Today’s CGT lineup includes founding members Richards and Lams, with the addition of Tom Griesgraber, a Chapman Stick virtuoso. Highly regarded instrumentalists, the CGT have achieved worldwide renown for their eclectic repertoire, precision arrangements, and expansive sonic palette. The California Guitar Trio has toured globally for over three decades, performing more than 2,000 concerts. CGT has released 21 albums, with their music being streamed over 120 million times on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.
The original members of California Guitar Trio met on the series of Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft courses in England in 1987. The three original members—Paul Richards of Salt Lake City, Utah, Bert Lams of Affligem, Belgium, and Hideyo Moriya of Tokyo, Japan—toured as part of Robert Fripp and The League of Crafty Guitarists. After completing the 1991 tour of Europe with the League of Crafty Guitarists, Fripp asked Lams to write down a list of musical aims, materials, strategy, and possible collaborators for what was called the California Project. Lams named two other Guitar Craft students as potential collaborators who would be willing to move temporarily to Los Angeles to work with him on this project based out of his home: Richards and Moriya. Thus the California Project ultimately became the California Guitar Trio. The first official performance of the California Guitar Trio took place on February 7, 1991. They continue to play in the New Standard Tuning using amplified acoustic guitars and various combinations of effects, guitar synthesizers and live loop recording as part of their performances. Their performances and recordings include original compositions, surf covers, and arrangements of classical music created for the New Standard Tuning and their tight interplay style known as "circulation" in the Guitar Craft parlance. Their influences include European classical music, rock, blues, jazz, world music, and surf music.
In 1992 and 1993 with Fripp and Trey Gunn, they toured and recorded as The Robert Fripp String Quintet. Several recordings of those performances are available through Fripp's DGMLive website.
In 1991, the CGT self-released their self-titled demo album, recorded in Bert Lams’ home just outside Hollywood, California. The recordings on this release were remastered by Tony Arnold and augmented with two additional tracks to form their first CD released on Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile record label , the 1993 album Yamanashi Blues,
In 1995, the trio were invited by physicist and Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann to record at his residence near Lamy, New Mexico. The resulting album Invitation includes pieces that were inspired by the landscape , and arrangements of pieces inspired by their surroundings, such as the theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and " Apache".
Later in 1995, Fripp asked the trio to be the opening act for King Crimson. CGT opened for King Crimson for more than 130 shows in the US, Europe and Japan, exposing their music to a global audience. A sample of these performances were released on their album An Opening Act.
In 1998, CGT released Pathways, in similar format to the first two albums, with combinations of original compositions, arrangements of classical pieces, and surf guitar songs.
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