This remarkable release from Seattle-based Michael Nicolella shows how times have changed. The Piazzolla notwithstanding, Nicolella's uncompromising choice of material never once loses the momentum established at the outset by Sierra's brilliant Toccata y Lamento.

The very presence of Berio's Sequenza XI is sufficient to ensure Nicolella's arrival will not go unnoticed. Although it is a work which tends to be esteemed rather than enjoyed, the very state of having recorded it can seriously further your career.

However, it is in John Fitz Rogers' eponymous Push for solo electric guitar that one becomes fully acquainted with the diversity of Nicolella's talent. In 5'20" of breathtaking heavy rock pyrotechnics, we find ourselves a long way from the days when classical guitarists would dip a toe into popular music by presenting some third party's intractable settings of Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Elsewhere, Nicolella is joined by a supporting cast of chamber musicians and a singer for the Berio arrangement and his own contemplative Bridges. The inclusion of this work together with the Three Brief Episodes for solo guitar, is significant. For much of the twentieth century the guitarist/composer was an endangered species, and it is with much relief that the likes of me are now able to issue regular bulletins on its global renaissance.

But all of this would be of little worth if it were not for the fact that Michael Nicolella emerges as a superb all-round guitar player whose dynamic and engaging performance shows him to be more than equal to the challenges he has set himself.

Nicolella finally takes up his '98 Strat for a wonderfully evocative, and dare I say it, nostalgic account of Little Wing, the sincerity of which is illustrated by his unconditional statement that '...Jimi Hendrix will prove to be one of history's most important and influential guitarists.'

There speaks a fully enlightened musician of our time.