Gary Willis

Since moving to Barcelona in 2004, Gary Willis has taught at Barcelona’s Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya conservatory. In 2014, he joined the faculty of Berklee Valencia, teaching masters in Contemporary Performance as well as students in the Study Abroad and First Year Abroad programs. The Texas native studied arranging and improvisation as part of the legendary jazz program at North Texas State University. After moving to Los Angeles in 1982, he became a course leader at Musicians Institute in Hollywood and also taught at California
Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

With a career spanning more than 45 years, Willis has released five solo CDs and 10 as co-leader of Tribal Tech, and has been a part of a multitude of other projects, including playing alongside Wayne Shorter, Allan Holdsworth, Hubert Laws, and many others.

Willis launched his solo career with the 1996 release of No Sweat, featuring performances by Dennis Chambers on drums, Scott Kinsey on keyboards, and Steve Tavaglione on woodwinds and EWI. For the 1998 follow-up Bent, in addition to Chambers, Kinsey, and Tavaglione, Willis added the fiery tenor of Bob Berg and long-time Tribal Tech cohort/drummer Kirk Covington. Additional albums include Actual Fiction and Slaughterhouse 3, both released in 2007; Shaman, a collaboration with Llibert Fortuny, in 2009; X by supergroup Tribal Tech in 2012; Retro, featuring Gergo Borlai on drums and Catalan pianist Albert Bover on keyboards, in 2013; and his latest CD, Larger Than Life, with Gergo Borlai on drums, longtime Tribal Tech bandmate Scott Kinsey on keyboards, Steve Tavaglione on saxes and EWI, Claudia Bardagí on vocals, and Llibert Fortuny on tenor sax and vocals.

2017 brought the year-long release of Groove A Day, the iOS play-along app that has Willis and Borlai performing a different groove for every day of the year. The interactive app allows you to select camera angles, customize the audio mix, loop specific sections, and adjust the tempo. In total, over 12 hours of grooves and decades of experience are delivered into one app.

In 2019, Ibanez announced the release of the 20th Anniversary Gary Willis signature model fretless bass (GWB20th). Featuring a “Tequila Sunrise” sunburst finish, the bass is constructed with an ash top, basswood body, a sunburst finished ramp and headstock, as well as the unique Sure-grip tuners that have graced the Willis signature line since the beginning. Also new to this limited-edition version of the GWB are the Aguilar DCB pickup and OBP-2 preamp. The bass has evolved over the years with subtle improvements and has expanded to offer three different models: the GWB35, GWB205 and the GWB1005. The GWB20th limited-edition release was celebrated at the annual Bass Bash event during NAMM week in Anaheim, California.

In demand as an educator, Willis has conducted clinics and master classes in 21 different countries. As an author, he’s published four books with Hal Leonard, including "101 Tips for Bass,” which provides valuable how-to insights that bassists of all styles and levels can benefit from. “Fingerboard Harmony for Bass” takes the mystery out of the fingerboard by exploiting the natural geometry and symmetry of the instrument.
Bass Player magazine calls “Ultimate Ear Training for Guitar and Bass” an “excellent method to help you develop your ears and connect them-through your hands to your instrument." “The Gary Willis Collection” features 11 transcriptions of original Willis tunes, including the contemporary classic "The Necessary Blonde,” which is one of two compositions also included in Sher Music’s “The New Real Book-Volume Two.”