John Floridis

Montana-raised George Winston, one of the best-known performers of contemporary instrumental music, returns to "Musician's Spotlight" for an update on his career, his recovery from illness, and his most recent recording, "Spring Carousel."

Just two years after he'd taken up the bass guitar, sixteen-year-old Nathan East found himself on the road with Barry White. The next time the phone rang, Quincy Jones was on the line. The calls kept coming, and for more than forty years, East has been holding down the bass on hit songs with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Barbra Streisand, Stevie Wonder, and Daft Punk.

Suzanne Santo, the fiddling, banjo-playing frontwoman for the duo HoneyHoney, lays out genre-crossing, self-penned songs on her first solo recording, “Ruby Red.” A reviewer described HoneyHoney’s first album as “taking its cue from Appalachian folk, country ballads, jazz and Quentin Tarantino films.”

Globe-trotting composer and pianist Amina Figarova’s career path has taken her from classical piano studies in Baku, Azerbaijan to jazz at the Rotterdam Conservatory and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Today, she tours almost constantly from her home base in Manhattan, still managing to record 13 albums since 1994.

John Floridis profiles the roster of musicians playing the 2018 Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival in Bigfork, Montana, August 28 - September 1.  Listen to Montana Public Radio at 8:00 p.m. Friday, August 31st for highlights from the festival's Thursday performance featuring Poco with Rusty Young, Justin Townes Earle, and Guthrie Brown.