Anyone who has followed the development of Julian Lage’s creativity will hardly have escaped a question as worn as it is unavoidable: when talent is so exceptional, is it genetic or environmental? Curiously, when discussing epigenetics, scientists often resort to an effective musical metaphor for popular explanation: the score is DNA, that is, inherited genes; the musician is the one who renders those genes expressively; musical interpretation is the environment and lifestyle; and the final result of the music is the phenotype, namely how the individual behaves while remaining identical to the “score”. It is not merely a stylistic whim to look for a possible explanation for the aptitudes of the Californian guitarist – born in Santa Rosa in 1987 – who possesses an all-round musicality that places him decisively outside guitar playing in the narrow sense, or outside any single reference genre, returning instead to the soothing and purposeful […]