James Edwin Ferguson (born December 23, 1948) is an American guitarist, composer, journalist, and educator. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Ferguson began his early music education playing the trombone at age 7, and then after eight years of study, switched to the guitar at age 15. He moved to California and began his music career in the 1970s, performing, teaching, and devoting serious study to the guitar. He has performed in the U.S. and abroad, is featured on solo guitar CDs showcasing his original compositions for classical guitar, and has had numerous compositions published in both anthologies alongside the works of other notable contemporary composers and in publications dedicated solely to his works. He has written several jazz guitar instructional books, including All Blues for Jazz Guitar. He is a Grammy-nominated music journalist and editor. He holds B.S. and M.F.A. degrees and has taught guitar and music courses at universities in California for over 25 years, has conducted guitar and music workshops in the U.S. and abroad, and has taught guitar privately for over 40 years. Journalism Ferguson has written articles for Guitar Player (1979–1992), Down Beat, JazzTimes, Fingerstyle Guitar, and Classical Guitar (1993–1998). As a student, he studied with George Barnes, Lenny Breau, David Tanenbaum, and José Rey de la Torre. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance and Literature from Mills College and wrote his thesis on Darius Milhaud. He has written for The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and edited several volumes for Guitar Solo Publications of San Francisco, including an instructional series on the works of Fernando Sor, Leo Brouwer, and Matteo Carcassi, and Federico Moreno Torroba's Castillos de España. He also compiled numerous collections of historic performances for Fantasy Records, Rhino Records, and Concord Records, and worked on several projects for other labels including Riverside Records. In 1994, Ferguson and Orrin Keepnews earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Album Notes for their liner notes to the 12-CD set Wes Montgomery—The Complete Riverside Recordings. The notes include a biography of Montgomery by Ferguson and interviews with Nat Adderley, Ron Carter, Kenny Burrell, John Scofield, and Tommy Flanagan. Composing Ferguson writes compositions and arrangements for both solo guitar and ensemble settings, including nylon-string guitar and flute, and nylon-string guitar and contrabass. He learned composition from Joseph Blaha and Ernest "Red" Varner. In the early 1990s, he began composing. In 2004, he released his first