There are few guitarists who can fill a large auditorium like the Harro East with the sound of a full band while sitting alone on the stage. Stanley Jordan did just that Monday night, leaving the audience stunned and wanting more even after his encore. Jordan's touch technique makes it possible for him to play bass notes, keep up a rhythm, and play breathtaking lead guitar all at the same time.

Jordan somehow manages to look every bit as youthful and shy as he did when he broke on to the scene in the mid-1980's. But he's a dramatic player in terms of body language and facial expressions. A particularly tough passage will bring a grimace to his face; an emphatic musical gesture will be accompanied by an equally wild lurch of his arm or his entire body.

Because he plays with both hands on the neck, Jordan uses more of the fretboard than any other guitarist. His vocabulary contains all of the normal strumming, picking, and sliding actions you can do on a guitar. But, by tapping the strings, he more than doubles the possibilities.

His repertoire was a bit out of step at a jazz festival -- pleasantly so. He played several pop tunes, reinventing each, and two classical pieces. The audience hung on every note and there were a lot of them to hang on.

"The Sound of Silence" was typical of the pop tunes. It was played impressionistically with bits and pieces of the melody emerging from a nicely vague swirl of notes. The slow movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 was so gorgeously reconstructed on electric guitar; it earned one of the largest ovations of the night. This was not a sonata, written for one instrument; it was a concerto, for an instrument and an orchestra. Jordan served as both.

Then he one-upped himself, saying he was going to play a little piano. What he played was the second and fourth movements of Concerto for Orchestra by Bartok on guitar and piano. To do this he constantly switched back and forth between bass piano (left hand) and treble guitar (right hand) and bass guitar (left hand) and treble piano (right hand). It was nothing short of amazing.

He ended with another classical piece of a sort, "Stairway To Heaven." Like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the song has been overplayed a bit. But like that symphony, it's pretty great. And in Jordan's hands it is spectacular. Another incredible festival highlight.

Before Jordan, I caught the Cuban pianist, Hilario Duran, at Max of Eastman Place. The pyrotechnics of the festival's other Cuban pianist, Chuchito Valdes, who played the night before at Montage Grille, made him a hard act to follow. But Duran was impressive in his own, more subtle way.

Among the most evocative songs he played was an original tune that he said was dedicated to the city of Havana. He must have mixed feelings about his home, because the composition had a beautiful, shimmering melody with a somewhat melancholy refrain.

I also went to hear the Ryan Quigley Sextet at Christ Church. I had seen most of the group's members in concerts at the church Saturday and Sunday evening and I was aware of how great they are. But the two previous groups were fairly light in terms of volume, and they were spectacular in a church where the superb acoustics carry the sound.

It should be obvious by now that this venue is not the one for a high-energy, six-person group. They were fantastic, but the sound was deafening and I couldn't take it for more than a couple of songs.

Tuesday I'll start the night with guitarist Russell Malone at Kilbourn Hall. Then I'll catch Herbie Hancock at the Kodak Theatre, and another fine pianist, François Bourassa, at the Xerox Auditorium.