Rez Abbasi on Expanding the Flattop Guitar’s Role in Jazz

Historically speaking, the standard flattop acoustic guitar has not often been considered a jazz instrument. Trad, swing, bebop, and post-bop players all gravitated toward archtop models, with occasional dabbling on classical-style axes; anything else was strictly for country pickers, folkies, or rock ’n’ rollers. This situation only began to change in the 1970s and ’80s with the rise of steel-friendly players like John Abercrombie, Pat Metheny, and Bill Frisell. Now, inspired by the example of those notable predecessors, Rez Abbasi is doing his part to advance the cause. 

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, and raised in Los Angeles, Abbasi has been a stalwart member of the New York jazz scene for more than three decades. Although he made his name playing electric guitar—both in his own groups and as a sideman for saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Dave Pietro, among others—Abbasi’s fondness for the acoustic instrument became apparent 15 years ago, when he formed the Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quartet with vibraphonist Bill Ware, bassist Stephan Crump, and drummer Eric McPherson. That group has put out three albums: Natural Selection (2010), Intents and Purposes (2015), and this year’s Sound Remains, which adds percussionist Hasan Bakr to the core lineup. 

The other Abbasi project that employs the steel-string acoustic is a trio formed to reinterpret the compositions of gypsy-jazz master Django Reinhardt for the 21st century, featuring keyboardist Neil Alexander and drummer Michael Sarin. The group’s sole album (for now), 2020’s Django-shift, is no Hot Club clone but an adventurous, sometimes futuristic-sounding hybrid of the swinging, the funky, and the avant-garde.

In this conversation, Abbasi reflected on his often surprising path as an acoustic guitarist.

Your first two Acoustic Quartet albums were released in 2010 and 2015. Then Django-shift came along in 2020, and now in 2025 there’s an Acoustic Quintet album. Have you had a conscious plan to do a project featuring acoustic guitar every five years?

It’s just the way it is. It’s a call-and-response thing, or a question and answer. For each record I make, I’m kind of answering what I just did. So if I do Django-shift, then I want to do something with electric. And that’s completely natural. Sometimes I’ll combine both, but that’s a little difficult because if you take it on the road, then you have to bring two guitars. These days, I’m keeping it to one instrument at a time. 

A lot of players start out playing acoustic and then move to electric. Was that how it worked with you?

No, I started off on electric. I was brought up in the ’70s, and the electric thing was really front and center then. My uncle brought home two Sears guitars that looked like [Gibson] SGs, and my brother and I started playing them with a little amplifier. The whole idea of an electric guitar is so neat for a kid, plugging into this other source and coming out with crazy sounds. 

It wasn’t until college that I got into the acoustic. I studied at USC for a year with an amazing classical guitarist named Scott Tennant [founder of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet]. That was on nylon-string and it was a beautiful experience, but for some reason the thumb on my left hand would cramp up when I played classical guitars; the neck was just too wide to be comfortable. I definitely got a lot out of it, but I realized, man, I’m not gonna be able to fulfill my goals with this instrument, so why am I bothering? 

So you dropped it. 

Yeah. I thought, let’s just stick to electric and jazz and composing. But eventually I figured out that you can get steel-string acoustics in different sizes and the necks on most of them aren’t nearly as big. So there I was, back to playing classical music on steel-string. Then I met [John] Abercrombie, who was creating some amazing music on steel-string—with a band, in fact! And not just, like, ballads—he was actually blowing jazz on steel strings. That was important, to see that.

Your playing style and compositions sometimes remind me also of Abercrombie’s frequent duo partner Ralph Towner, another acoustic player.

Ralph is definitely a big influence, but Ralph is mostly a nylon-string player. I mean, he’s used a 12-string too, but that’s more of a textural thing. My biggest influence as a steel-string player was Abercrombie. I studied with him when I first moved to New York. I was 20 or 21, and I was able to get ahold of him and take a few lessons. He had such a sensitive touch on steel-string, and such a tone, and it wasn’t missing any of the beauty that came from nylon-string. Also, he’d go from acoustic to clean electric to distorted electric. I liked what he was doing with the various colors of the guitar, and I molded my vision towards that as well. You know, some jazz guitar players have their one tone and that’s it, and you hear that all the time. Someone like John or [Bill] Frisell is very . . . well, versatile is one word, but it’s even more than that. Their palette is just extensive.

How about Django Reinhardt? Were you a fan before making Django-shift?

The strange thing is, I was never a full-blown Django acolyte. I definitely recognize what a monster he was, and there was a time when I was listening to a few of his records here and there. But all this hard-swinging four-to-the floor material that his playing was always surrounded by, I couldn’t get past that after about a half an hour of listening, you know? And that’s just the truth. 

But this guy named Peter Williams on the West Coast was doing a Django festival and asked me to play it. I said, “I’m not a Django guy. I’m not gonna play that style. I’ll take the gig, of course, if you want to commission me for this”—it was very good money—“as long as you’re okay with me reframing it.” And he was like, “Absolutely, that’s why I called you, I knew you would do that.” So that’s when I thought of making a modern Django record through my lens, which means electric keyboards, drums that are more open, and all that. Some people absolutely loved it, and the Django fans . . . I got some comments. But for me, it’s like, his compositions are really quite amazing. Why not nurture them and see what else you can produce with those compositions?

The focal point of your Acoustic Quartet—now Quintet—is the interplay between Bill Ware’s vibes and your steel-string acoustic. It’s such an unusual and striking tonal combination. Where did you get the idea to pair those instruments?

I started a record label about 25 years ago, and Bill was one of the artists that my partner and I signed. I just noticed how beautiful his tone was. His attack was very different from most of the vibes players I’d heard at the time. You heard more metal with their attack. With Bill, you still hear the metal, but you also hear some kind of softer mallet sound in there. I don’t know what he does to get that, but anyway, I thought it’d be great to do something with this guy eventually. The steel-string has that metallic plucking sound, as does the vibraphone, and I thought those two could mesh really well. Then you add the ride cymbal, which is in the same frequency range. Hasan, the percussionist, fills up the mids. And Stephan has this real low growl in his bass, which just heightens the whole thing.

When you play in an electric context, you sometimes use a sitar guitar, with a set of sympathetic drone strings in addition to the fretted ones. In the acoustic group, you also achieve sitar-like effects—with a fretless guitar.

It’s weaving the notes in between the notes. The semi-microtones, I guess you would say. I almost hear it more as a sarod than a sitar. It’s not like I’m going for a sarod sound, though. I see the fretless as its own vehicle, and it’s one that hasn’t been explored that much. It’s nice to have that in your hands and say, “Hey, this is fresh—I haven’t really heard this. What am I gonna do with it?” Rather than, “I’ve got 15 people I was influenced by in my life on the guitar, and now I’ve got to get rid of that influence.” I mean, I’m not trying to get rid of anything, but I’m trying to find my own approach. That’s what we all do, because that adds to the vernacular.

Is there anything in particular you’re working on these days to help develop that approach?

One thing I practice all the time is playing softer when I’m playing harder, you know what I mean? Playing softer when the energy of the music is high. That’s a real bitch, man. You have to keep reminding yourself to relax.

It’s a real mind game playing jazz, because if you’re improvising, you don’t know necessarily what’s going to come out, so it’s essential to have a strong psychological idea of what you’re doing before you do it. I’m still working at that. Also there’s the synchronicity of keeping the right hand and left hand together, which is something not many other instrumentalists have to do. You use two hands with a lot of other instruments, but for most of them both hands are performing the same action and not always at the same time. Fretting a note and picking a note are two very different actions, and you have to do them in sync.

I’m coming up with new exercises all the time. This is the amazing thing about the guitar. One of my great teachers, Joe Diorio, always told me that harmony is endless on the guitar. It’s endless anywhere, but on the guitar it’s really endless, because you can play an open string and it’s like, holy mackerel! Suddenly you’ve got a whole other dimension of harmony going on. It’s just outrageous.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.