FostersWeb.com > Jeff's Biography

Jeff Foster is a professional guitarist, composer, producer, guitar instructor, writer and webmaster. He is the creative force behind StringDancer.com, an award-winning community portal site for guitarists.

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* Jeff's Music Background *

• Began playing guitar as a child, beginning formal training at age 10
• Former Instructor of Advanced Guitar at Indiana University School of Music - Bloomington
• Former Instructor of Classical Guitar at California State University - Bakersfield
• Former Master Music Artist with Very Special Arts - Indiana
• Former America Online Community Leader in charge of AOL's GTR-Guitar Online area
• Playing professionally (in bands and solo) since 1972
• Composer, producer, and recording artist (visit his MP3 site)
• Webmaster of the StringDancer Guitar Community, for which Jeff received the Golden Web Award from the International Association of Webmasters and Designers, "in recognition of creativity, integrity and excellence on the web". 

* Guitar Style *

• Jeff's guitar style is a mixture of classical, jazz, flamenco, new-age, rock, blues, country ... well, it's hard to say, actually. He can play a little bit of every damn thing!
• Jeff plays guitars custom-made for him: a nylon-string electro-acoustic MIDI guitar synthesizer created by Turner Guitars of Santa Cruz, California; a Vlado Proskurnjak hybrid classic/flamenco guitar, made in Croatia. For fun and travel, he packs along a customized Go Guitar, made in San Diego by Sam Radding.
• Jeff's nylon-string, semi-solid-body Turner allows him to virtually wrap his fingers around several instruments at once. As a result of this high-tech mojo in which he shamelessly indulges, Jeff is getting pretty good at sounding like an orchestra when he plays. Noone understands why he does these things.

Jorge Strunz & Ardeshir Farah, Liona Boyd,
and Jeff hanging out after a Strunz & Farah
concert in Newport Beach, CA - 2000

 

* and another thing...*

• By now decidedly ensconced in middle age (meaning he now knows his fundament from an excavation), Jeff has survived marriages, hard drive crashes, cover bands, the 'burbs, a broken heart, and five years living a musician's no-good gypsy lifestyle in a motorhome, generally somewhere in the southern California desert, sometimes at the coast, sometimes high in the pines -- with a huge, black ghost of a dog named Vuk.
• After considerable meditation (as well as with some occasionally intensive medication), he has for now determined that indeed life, for the most part, is precisely as Kurt Vonnegut once described it: farting around until death. He finds this comforting for some reason.
• He also finds he best enjoys farting around at the edge of moving waters, staring into waves....
• Basically, happiness happens ... Jeff learned this from Vuk, actually.
• So, having evolved into something of an unorthodox (but practicing) BornAgain/Native American/Zen/Existentialist, Jeff now lives contentedly in his aboriginal home on the burbling banks of Buck Creek in Muncie, Indiana. The only thing keeping Jeff attached to the real world at this point is the insatiable need to go online.
• He's now on cable....

• Visit Jeff's MP3 music site for MP3 streams, downloads, and CD-ROM purchase.
• For more on Jeff's web design enterprise, visit the web design area.
• Email Jeff