Scottish guitar player Chris Amer is slowly but surely establishing a reputation for his tasteful, distinctive, musically intelligent playing style. As a guitarist and composer, Chris has developed an original sound characterised by space, texture and carefully chosen notes. Primarily playing electric guitar and a unique theorbed tenor guitar (see instruments page), Chris’s playing comfortably sits on the ever-blurring boundaries between jazz and traditional Scottish music.

Chris has performed and recorded with musicians such as Matt Carmichael, Fergus McCreadie, Mike Vass, Juliette Lemoine, Ryan Young, Charlie Stewart and Dan Brown. Over recent years, Chris has released several collections of original music, most recently a collection of original multi-tracked guitar works under the series title ‘Making Peace With What Is’ inspired by time spent in an extensive library of historic photographs taken by his Orcadian Grandfather. In August 2024, Chris debuted a new 6-piece band featuring Matt Carmichael, Fergus McCreadie, Mhairi Marwick, Gus Stirrat and Chun Wei-Kang in a sold-out show in the Edinburgh Fringe.

2025 will see the release of more new music, and more live appearances.

Chris is also an active guitar teacher, and a visiting tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Chris was born and raised in Edinburgh. Throughout his teenage years he studied with renowned Edinburgh guitarist, Kevin Mackenzie, and held the guitar chair with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland. In 2012 he moved to Glasgow after gaining a place on the prestigious jazz programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, an institution from which he has graduated twice (jazz undergraduate and Scottish music postgraduate). Chris has appeared on BBC Radio and Television and has performed throughout the UK and Europe.

A thoughtful, reflective and creative musician, Chris is continually writing original music. Human beings never perceive things in exactly the same way. Everything, external and internal, is woven with memory, personality emphases, and imagination completely unique to each person. Chris’s music comes from what he’s happened to notice whilst existing in places with people, walking with the One by whom value and meaning are immutably found in all things, vast and tiny.

“…and on this basis it is understandable that music is music to man.”

Francis Schaeffer