By age 17, guitarist Julian Lage had recorded with bluegrass legend David Grisman and jazz vibraphone great Gary Burton, starred in an Oscar-nominated documentary (Jules at Eight), and performed at the Grammys. Now, after three years at the Berklee College of Music, during which time he built musical relationships with mandolin player Chris Thile, pianist Taylor Eigsti, and jazz guitar great Jim Hall, Lage has released Sounding Point, his debut album as a leader.

Highlighting his love for jazz and bluegrass, the album features two bands, a jazz quintet (on original tunes such as “Clarity” and “All Purpose Beginning”) and a trio with bluegrass superstars Béla Fleck and Thile (on the collaboratively composed “Long Day, Short Night” and “The Informant, ” as well as Elliott Smith’s “Alameda”). Lage’s smooth touch and bare-bones jazz tone on his Linda Manzer archtop shine through the louder instruments in the quintet (which includes drums, bass, cello, and saxophone), and his intelligent, targeted phrasing on his Martin D-18GE is a perfect complement to Thile and Fleck. “I don’t see a big difference between playing a flattop and a jazz guitar,” Lage says. “The biggest difference is that I’m amplified with the jazz guitar.”

Lage, who currently tours only with the Manzer, turned to Hall for advice about getting good tone through an amplifier. “His advice was the best,” Lage says. “He said, ‘I use the amp just to amplify what’s already there.’” Although his Martin stays home while he’s on the road, Lage says, “When I pick up the dreadnought, I feel totally at home. I’m really drawn to that roots style, and the technique is so refined and edgy, which is an aesthetic that I love.” By studying both instruments, Lage has developed a singular style marked by speed and the use of open strings, harmonics, and double-stops.

Lage developed his jet-propelled fretting hand by looking to classical performers such as Martha Argerich, Yo-Yo Ma, and Hilary Hahn for inspiration on playing complex music with pinpoint accuracy. “What I found is that it’s helpful to practice things extremely slow,” Lage says. “Dirge-like slow makes a couple of things happen: you always land on the tip of your finger, and you always land in the middle of the fret. I found that if I could do that accurately at a slow tempo, when I sped up, I could jump for a note and land in the middle and on the tip of my finger, and the sound quality wouldn’t suffer.”

He has also used the Alexander Technique, a school of thought about kinesthetic body coordination, to achieve speed and accuracy by helping him engage his whole body. “One thing that has helped me play quicker is an awareness of [how I was] locking my ankles, because a lot of guitar players chop off their senses from the waist down,” he says. “But if I want to play fast, I need to make sure my wrists, ankles, neck, and everything are as loose as possible so that when I play quickly, it’s not isolated in the hands.” This ease of motion is visible when he plays live; ducking and weaving during a solo, Lage leans over the guitar body, fixed intently on the guitar neck like a spectator watching a race car speed by.

An important aspect of Lage’s soloing is his use of open strings, an unusual technique for many jazz players, but one that adds a heavenly sustain and tonal variation to his playing. “I’ve tried to get used to playing open strings, [to use their] natural resonance,” Lage says. “When you play a line that’s fretted but there are one or two open strings, that’s the cool stuff.” He also frequently uses double-stops slid up and down the guitar neck, both chromatically and in scales, to build solos and segue between musical thoughts. “On a good day I’ll be hearing double-stops as two voices,” he says. “Even though it sounds like one unit, ideally they are two voices that can eventually branch off.”

It’s not all jazz and bluegrass on Sounding Point; the guitar-centric effort includes touches of classical (“All Purpose Beginning”) and Eastern European traditions (such as the Russian influences on “The Informant”). This diverse musical vision stems from the great musicians Lage grew up around and from his schooling at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Ali Akbar College of Music as well as his stint at Berklee.

In his playing and writing, Lage seeks to keep the listener on his toes. “My disposition is to go toward the more abstract,” Lage says of his composing. “I like fleeting things that happen and then disappear, and you say, ‘What was that?’” He uses harmonics to achieve the same effect: “I have a lot of fun using harmonics in places you don’t expect them to be, like doing a fast line that you expect to land really strong but instead lands on a really high harmonic. It frames it.”