Vasti Jackson

Vasti Jackson. Born: October 20, 1959. McComb MS.. , Multiple Grammy nominee world renowned guitarist and vocalist, 2019 Polar Music Award (Playing For Change), 2019 Arts Trail Marker, 2017 Arts Ambassador, 2016 Grammy nominee (The Soul of Jimmie Rogers) 2015 Albert King Lifetime Guitar Award, 2014 Cultural ambassador, 2012 Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame inductee, and 2011 Mississippi Living Blues Legend Award recipient., Vasti (pronounced Vast-Eye) Jackson is a consummate performer, guitarist, vocalist, composer, arranger, producer, actor, and educator. From his early beginnings performing in churches, and juke joints in McComb, Mississippi, to festivals, Concerts, and theaters around the world. Vasti moves effortlessly from Blues, to Soul, to Jazz, to gospel, to funk, to country, and beyond., As an actor Vasti co stars as Ike Turner in the international musical "Simply The Best" The Tina Turner story. Vasti currently performs the lead role as Robert Johnson in the theatrical presentation Robert Johnson: The Man The Myth The Music, Old Lucas in Hell and High Water, in which he is the musical director, and composer, and as Hobo Bill in the stage play Jimmie Rodgers: Americas' Blue Yodeler. Vasti is guest artist, and composer with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra presentation of Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale., As an educator, Vasti communicates with enthusiasm, compassion, patience, and an innate ability to meet his audience at their needs. With the Playing For Change Foundation "Creating Positive Change Through Music, and Arts Education" Vasti has help develop fifteen music schools in twelve countries with more than two thousand students., Vasti Jackson has been featured in magazines such as Guitar Player, Living Blues, Back To The Roots, Nothing But The Blues, Juke Blues (England), Blues Revue, Jefferson Blues magazine, Blues Matters and many other publications. He has performed on Dan Akroyd's House of Blues Radio Hour, the Starz Encore Network, WGN-TV in Chicago, and PBS. He has performed, written, produced, and recorded music for HBO, VH1, Mississippi Educational Television, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), and radio and television programs in Australia, Uraguay, Finland, and Canada., Vasti Jackson is the only Mississippian to have two recordings nominated for the Grammy Award in the same year, in the same category, and with one win.