Martin Barre

British guitarist born in Birmingham in 1946, Martin Barre rose to prominence on the English rock scene in the late 1960s before joining Jethro Tull in 1968, a role he held until the early 2010s. With Jethro Tull, Barre helped shape a sound that blended progressive rock, hard rock, folk rock and blues influences, notably on the band’s landmark albums of the 1970s and 1980s, where his playing alternates between electric riffs, acoustic passages and strongly structured melodic lines. Alongside touring and recording with Ian Anderson’s group, he developed a more personal body of work that took form in a solo discography from the 1990s onward — including “A Trick of Memory” (1994), “Stage Left” (2003), “Away with Words” (2013), “Back to Steel” (2015) and “Roads Less Travelled” (2018) — in which he explores a palette crossing rock, blues and touches of jazz. Firmly established as the leader of his own Martin Barre Band, he has toured extensively in Europe and North America since the 2010s, alternating reinterpretations of Jethro Tull material with original compositions within a classic-rock aesthetic driven by electric guitar and arrangements often close to blues rock.