Trey Gunn

Trey Gunn (born December 13, 1960) is an American musician, known for being in the progressive rock band King Crimson from 1994 to 2003. He plays Warr Guitar, Chapman Stick and bass guitar.

Biography A native Texan who now resides in New Mexico, Gunn began playing classical piano when he was 7. He has also played electric bass, electric and acoustic guitar, keyboards, and the touch guitar. He moved to Eugene, Oregon and played in punk bands while earning a degree in classical music composition at the University of Oregon. Next, he moved to New York City and began a professional career in music.

He was one of the initial students of Guitar Craft, founded and instructed by Robert Fripp, and appeared on several of the earliest League of Crafty Guitarists albums.

From 1988 to 1991, he played Chapman Stick in a quartet, with Toyah Willcox, Robert Fripp, and Paul Beavis, initially named "Fripp, Fripp". By the second tour it became Sunday All Over the World. They recorded and released an album in 1991 entitled Kneeling at the Shrine. In the same year, along with Beavis and Tony Geballe, he also played stick on the solo Toyah album Ophelia's Shadow, mixed by Fripp, and produced by Toyah who was to later guest on his album, The Third Star. In 1992, Gunn was asked to join David Sylvian and Robert Fripp in a collaborative project that toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. The band released The First Day and Damage–a live recording from the Royal Albert Hall in London. During that period, Gunn also recorded his first solo album (other than a few that he had self-released), One Thousand Years.

In 1992 and 1993 with Fripp, Bert Lams, Hideyo Moriya, and Paul Richards, he toured and recorded as The Robert Fripp String Quintet.

In 1994, Gunn joined King Crimson. With King Crimson he played a Chapman Stick and later diverse types of Warr guitar. He was part of the "double trio" formation opposite Tony Levin. In 1997, King Crimson fragmented into smaller configurations known as the ProjeKcts. Gunn, along with Fripp, participated in all of the ProjeKcts performances and recordings. In 1999, the group mutated into a four-piece–Belew, Fripp, Gunn, and Mastelotto. He left Crimson after "The Power to Believe" tour in 2003. Over the course of a decade with the group, he participated in thirty-three King Crimson CDs, two DVDs, and hundreds of performances.

He has also performed and recorded with a number of other musicians: Tool, Puscifer, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Sean Malone and Gordian Knot, David Sylvian, Vernon Reid, John Paul Jones, Eric Johnson, Jerry Marotta, Alice, Azam Ali, Matt Chamberlain, Michael Brook, Bill Rieflin, David Hykes of the Harmonic Choir and many more. He has released a number of solo albums, as Trey Gunn and as the leader of The Trey Gunn Band.

In the late 2000s, Gunn began to experience discomfort in his hands from playing the broad-necked Warr guitar in a typical slung position. In response, he switched to playing it on his lap, and he found that the piano-informed techniques enabled by this position improved his playing. According to Gunn, the Warr guitar was originally intended to be played in this fashion, but its design and promotion ultimately emphasized slung play in order to maximize its appeal to typical guitar players.

In 2003, Gunn founded the multi-media group Quodia with Joe Mendelson, in which his contributions are more vocal than instrumental. In 2004, he and Pat Mastelotto started collaborating with Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen, forming KTU out of their respective duos, TU and Kluster. In 2012, he began working with Jerry Marotta in the group The Security Project.

In addition to helping run the label 7d Media, he currently works as a solo artist, in film and television scoring, coaching artists in the creative process at Original Voice Coaching, and as a member of the group Tu-Ner with Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter.

Discography

Solo albums Playing with Borrowed Time (1985) (cassette) One Thousand Years (1993) The Third Star (1996) Raw Power (1999) The Joy of Molybdenum (2000) Live Encounter (2001) Road Journals (CD-ROM) (2002) Untune The Sky (CD/DVD) (2003) (compilation) Music for Pictures (2008) Modulator (2010) I'll Tell What I Saw (2010) (compilation) The Waters, They Are Rising (2015) Punkt 1 (2020) Firma (2020) Life on Hisarü 9 (2020) (with Markus Reuter)

Score Books Trey Gunn - Scores (2014) King Crimson - THRAK (2017) (full band transcriptions + tabs) King Crimson - The Discipline Era Transcriptions (2020) (full band transcriptions + tabs)

With others