Lee Ritenour earned the nickname “Captain Fingers” for reasons that become self-evident about thirty seconds into watching him play. His right hand has a quality that studio engineers have been trying to capture accurately since the early 1970s — a touch that makes a guitar phrase sound simultaneously effortless and precise, the note arriving exactly where it should without any apparent exertion in getting it there.
What has kept Ritenour interesting across a career spanning more than forty albums is that the technique has never been the point. He is a fusion guitarist, which means he has spent decades working at the intersection of jazz harmony, R&B feel, and rock energy — a combination that, in lesser hands, produces music that satisfies no one completely. In Ritenour’s hands, it tends to produce something that rewards close listening: sophisticated harmonic movement underneath an accessible surface.
His collaborators over the years have included Herbie Hancock and Dave Grusin, and that pedigree tells you something about where Ritenour sits in the jazz ecosystem — not as a purist, but as someone who has always moved fluently between idioms without losing his own center of gravity. A live performance gives you access to that quality in ways a studio record cannot fully replicate. Ritenour’s improvisational choices in concert tend to be more expansive, the phrasing looser in the best sense.
Buffalo State Performing Arts Center has built a credible jazz and contemporary music program, and this is exactly the kind of booking that rewards a venue’s core audience while reaching beyond it. Tickets are available at the Buffalo State Performing Arts Center box office.