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Bio
I was born December 17, 1955 in Worcester,
Massachusetts. It was a long time ago, I was about
ten years old when a guitar came to my house, and we
became real good friends. The music of the time
filled the air with legends and rockers, Louis
Armstrong to The Beatles, and everything in between.
I played a lot. Practicing chords and trying to solo
like the rockers I heard on the radio and records,
and diggin’ the sounds of great jazz guitarists like
Herb Ellis. Around 1970 I heard The Mahavishnu
Orchestra, and realized the intricacies of jazz
merged with the emotion of rock. It was like nothing
I’d had ever heard before.
In 1973 I entered the army. I continued to practice
everyday and read theory books and began applying
that onto the guitar. I jammed as much as I could
with other enlisted men and learned a lot from
groovin’ with all their different styles from all
over the different parts of the country. My buddies
in green showing me how to play Delta Blues, the way
they played in Philly, and country western music as
well.
After three years in the army I used my GI benefits
and entered Berklee College of Music in 1977. I took
full advantage of their jazz program, studying
everything from composition and arranging,
conducting, involvement in their ensemble program,
and a wealth of numerous music subjects. After
receiving a Bachelors degree in Jazz, I entered The
New England Conservatory of Music and received a
Masters degree also in Jazz, and was privileged to
study and become friends with George Russell, the
great theorist/composer and author of “The Lydian
Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization”. Up until
the time I received my Masters degree, I played
regularly in my own commercial band doing functions
and clubs as well as free lancing and regular jam
sessions. In 1988 I moved to New Jersey to get
involved in the New York scene.
I set out to meet and play with as many musicians as
I could, and put together my own trio of guitar,
bass and drums playing a hard-edged electric jazz.
We played mostly original compositions, playing gigs
throughout the New York/New Jersey area. Through my
bass player, Ray Paez, who was a recording engineer
in a New York City recoding studio, I spent
countless days in the studio working on projects
with Ray and other musicians, playing that same
hard-edged style. Often arriving at the studio
around nine or ten in the morning, we’d work around
the clock until midnight. Even going back the next
day to do it all again if the studio was available.
Around 1995, when my band disbanded, I began playing
regularly in other people’s bands. Playing steady
weekly hard-edged jazz gigs in Patterson and Jersey
City, New Jersey. The music was intense and the
clubs were smoky. From working with my band doing my
material, to playing with others doing jazz
standards in a non-standard way, to the studio
sessions and all the jamming in between, I stayed as
busy as possible firing it up and cranking it out
with a host of great musicians. In 1997 I moved from
New Jersey to Massachusetts. I kept working in New
Jersey, driving weekly between the two states. On
one of my trips in 2003, while jamming with bass
player Todd Urban, he suggested that I go into the
studio and record a CD of my material. He introduced
me to drummer John O’Brien who agreed to be part of
the project, made connections with Jayson Dezuzio
and his Stained Glass Recording studio and my CD
“That’s What I’m Saying” was produced. |
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