High Action

Rodney Jones was born in New Haven, CT where he started playing guitar at age 6. Career highlights include playing with Dizzy Gillespie (three years), Lena Horne (20 years as guitarist/musical director), and Ruth Brown (guitarist/musical director). Extensive TV work including staff guitarist, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, The Cosby Show, Showtime at the Apollo, The Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and The Apprentice. As a leader recorded CDs for Blue Note Records, Verve, HighNote and others. Recordings with Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Burrell, Carl Allen, Billy Joel, Dave Koz, Ray Charles, Maceo Parker, James Brown. Master classes at Eastman School, Berklee College, and others. Has toured internationally and given lectures worldwide on music as well as the Art of Spiritual Living at Eckankar seminars.

Rodney studied at City College of New York with pianist John Lewis, founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Studies with guitar legend Bruce Johnson.

He has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School since 2007.

You may not know Andrew Synowiec by name, but chances are you’ve heard his guitar playing. Andrew is a multi-faceted musician with credits like The Who’s #1 album Who, the blockbuster film Frozen (including “Let It Go”), and countless commercial and indie projects. With his collection of over 90 stringed instruments, he has recorded for artists ranging from M83 to Barbra Streisand and producers from Bob Rock to David Foster. Andrew has contributed to albums selling over 10 million copies worldwide and more than 25 Grammy-nominated recordings, including his own 2015 Grammy Award as a member of the acclaimed LA Big Band “Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band.”

Andrew’s live performances cover the globe from Madison Square Garden to the Hollywood Bowl. He has appeared on all the major networks and accompanied artists such as Ariana Grande, Elton John and the LA Philharmonic.

In 2014, Andrew completed construction of his private recording studio “House of Syn,” designed and built from the ground up by legendary acoustician George Augspurger. Recent credits include Josh Groban’s new album Harmony, the motion picture Call Of The Wild, and the iconic TV show The Simpsons.

Andrew recently released his first full length album, Second Story. Recorded in a historic Hollywood studio with a band of renowned musicians, the entire record was cut live in just six hours. Second Story is an instrumental mixture of Rock, Jazz and Blues with an emphasis on the feel of celebrated players doing what they do best. The record has received wide-ranging air play and praise from notable fans such as Steve Vai.

Michael O'Neill's services as a guitarist and vocalist have been called upon at the highest levels of the music industry for over 30 years.Starting with his first tour of the U.S. and Europe on the Crusaders "Street Life" tour to his ongoing work with George Benson and Barbra Streisand,Michael has played on hundreds of recordings,worked on dozens of World tours,recorded 5 solo cd's,made numerous television and video appearances,provided hundreds of titles for background music sources.Working with George Benson since 1981,Michael has appeared on "The Best of Benson Live",George Benson and Al Jarreau cd "Givin it Up",Benson's "Absolute Live"and "Live in Montreux 1986" dvd's and served as an Associate Producer on Benson's most recent cd,"Songs and Stories".Michael has recently entered the arena of television composers as his music can be heard on " The Real Housewives of Miami","The Real Husbands of Hollywood","Pregnant in Heels","Miss Advised","Million Dollar Listing","Brooklyn Big Style","Wicked Tuna",Food Paradise" and a growing list of new productions.With his extensive and varied experiences at the top level of the music industry Michael has a huge pallette of styles and colors to draw from which result in a unique compositional voice.  

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has been described as “a singular talent” (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), ”NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz—or otherwise” (Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal), and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). In recent Downbeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as guitarist, rising star jazz artist, and rising star composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Halvorson has released a series of critically acclaimed albums on the Firehouse 12 label, from Dragon’s Head (2008), her trio debut featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith, expanding to a quintet with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon on Saturn Sings (2010) and Bending Bridges (2012), a septet with tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik on Illusionary Sea (2014), and finally an octet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn on Away With You (2016). She also released the solo recording Meltframe (2015), and most recently debuted Code Girl (2018), a new ensemble featuring vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (singing Halvorson’s own lyrics), trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, saxophonist and vocalist María Grand, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. 

One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot and John Zorn. She is also part of several collaborative projects, most notably the longstanding trio Thumbscrew with Michael Formanek on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums.

World renowned guitarist, educator and Emmy award winning composer, Tim is a member of the legendary Northwest Gypsy Jazz Group Pearl Django and popular duo with Jamie Findlay. In between gigs with PD and Jamie, Tim tries to play as many Solo Guitar performance as he can fit into the schedule.

John Pisano is an influential jazz guitarist and studio musician, known for his mastery as an accompanist.

He can be heard on recordings with artists including Joe Pass, Herb Alpert, and Chico Hamilton, and live at his weekly Guitar Night in Los Angeles.

Bio

Pisano was born in 1931 on Staten Island, New York. His father and uncle played banjo and guitar, and would often perform popular standards around the house.

Pisano got his own musical start at the piano, but eventually switched to the guitar at age 14. During his formative years, he briefly studied with the famed guitarist/teacher Chuck Wayne, and was heavily influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt.

Pisano's first professional gigs were with the Johnny Long Orchestra, where he played swing rhythm guitar. The parts were very simple harmonically, so he came up with ways to add more movement to the chords while still keeping good time.

At age 20, he enlisted in the Airforce and played guitar in a sextet called the Crew Chiefs. This was an important experience for Pisano, as he got the opportunity to perform live in military clubs, and record for recruitment advertisements.

Pisano left the service in 1955, and was about to start his studies at the Manhattan School of Music when he got a call for an audition with Chico Hamilton. He got the gig (taking the place of Jim Hall), and moved out to California, where he still remains today.

John Pisano is an influential jazz guitarist and studio musician, known for his mastery as an accompanist.

He can be heard on recordings with artists including Joe Pass, Herb Alpert, and Chico Hamilton, and live at his weekly Guitar Night in Los Angeles.

Bio

Pisano was born in 1931 on Staten Island, New York. His father and uncle played banjo and guitar, and would often perform popular standards around the house.

Pisano got his own musical start at the piano, but eventually switched to the guitar at age 14. During his formative years, he briefly studied with the famed guitarist/teacher Chuck Wayne, and was heavily influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt.

Pisano's first professional gigs were with the Johnny Long Orchestra, where he played swing rhythm guitar. The parts were very simple harmonically, so he came up with ways to add more movement to the chords while still keeping good time.

At age 20, he enlisted in the Airforce and played guitar in a sextet called the Crew Chiefs. This was an important experience for Pisano, as he got the opportunity to perform live in military clubs, and record for recruitment advertisements.

Pisano left the service in 1955, and was about to start his studies at the Manhattan School of Music when he got a call for an audition with Chico Hamilton. He got the gig (taking the place of Jim Hall), and moved out to California, where he still remains today.

Guitarist Bobby Broom’s love of jazz has never blocked out his affection for the pop music which he grew up with. It’s been a frequent wellspring throughout his career.

“It’s a lot of what I do,” he acknowledges. “Material is material, and I’m just trying to do things that are interesting to me and that I feel might be interesting to people.”

Soul Fingers, his joyful 2018 release with his organ trio The Organi-Sation, produced by legendary drummer Steve Jordan, presents a whole album’s worth of such interesting things.

Drawn from Broom’s favorite songs of his childhood in the 1960s and ’70s, the album runs the gamut from The Beatles and Procul Harum to Bobbie Gentry and Motown.

It’s a path that has won Broom an impressive following, and significant acclaim, both within and outside his home base of Chicago.

Chicago Tribune critic Howard Reich hails the guitarist as “offer[ing] an object lesson in what an inventive jazz musician can do with a familiar song.”

Indeed, Soul Fingers is not Broom’s first album-length assay of the music of his youth. 2001’s Stand! took on pop hits of the 1960s. The new record leans toward the ’70s—with renewed perspective.

“The difference between Stand! and Soul Fingers is, frankly, nearly twenty years of life,” Broom says. “Hopefully that means that much more depth for me as an artist. I would hope that all of my experiences play a part in my ability to bring my new music to the table, and present it to the public in a way that’s even more convincing, heartfelt, and nuanced.”

Not to be overlooked is Broom’s exploration of these tunes with a new ensemble, featuring the deft, soulful organist Ben Paterson and shrewd drummer Kobie Watkins. The Organi-Sation, brought together as an opening act for Steely Dan’s 2014 summer tour, quickly developed a chemistry that Broom describes as “a wonderful surprise. It was incredible how much this new group jelled, and the level of music that we were able to make.”

For Lee Ritenour, there aren’t many ‘firsts’ left to achieve. During his dazzling five-decade career, the fabled LA guitarist has taken his music to the outer limits, alighting on every genre and occupying every position in the rock ‘n’ roll firmament. He’s been an enfant terrible of ’70s fusion, a crossover star of the ’80s pop chart, an honorary exponent of Brazilian jazz, and the fingers behind ’90s supergroup, Fourplay. Ritenour’s accolades include: 45 albums, Grammy award winner, plus 16 Grammy nominations, Alumnus of the year at USC, Los Angeles’ Jazz Society Honoree (2019), plus thousands of sessions with legends such as Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, among others.

And yet, when he checks the rear-view mirror, the 68-year-old acknowledges he’s never made a record like Dreamcatcher. “People have been telling me for years: ‘Rit, you gotta make a solo guitar record’. In the past, I’ve always been the band guy, the ensemble guy, the collaborative-guitar-player guy. So this was the one project I hadn’t done. And this year, I knew it was time.”

Weaving tapestries of instrumental guitar and conjuring eclectic moods, the 12 tracks of Dreamcatcher rank amongst the most melodic and tinglingly beautiful in Ritenour’s catalogue. But there’s a power and purpose here, too, hinting at the darker circumstances that sparked this new record. “Our house and my studio in Malibu, California burnt down in 2018,” he recalls. “About 100 of my guitars went up in the fire, plus 40 amps, lots of music, the history of my whole career, pretty much. A week after the fire, I went to the hospital, which I’d never had to do before, for surgery to replace an aortic valve. So those incidents and the support from my family and friends absolutely went into this music. Making this record was a life-saver for me.”

 Dreamcatcher might have been born from personal challenges, but the record took shape against the global tragedy of Covid-19. Ritenour had already written several key tracks before shutdown. But as he settled into the makeshift studio at his new home in Marina Del Rey, equipped with little more than seven guitars, a computer interface and good intentions, the guitarist let the context flood into the music he was tracking. “It was an important album for me,” he notes. “Especially now, with everything going on in the world.”

Even without lyrics, every track tells a story. Take the molten blues licks of “Abbot Kinney”, named for the fabled boulevard in Venice, California. “One day when everything was shut down,” says Ritenour, “I drove my bike there and was just devastated to find it completely empty. But then I heard this rock guitar start up. I don’t know if it was a kid, but somebody nearby had just turned it up to 10 and said, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna have some fun’. It brought a huge smile to my face and inspired me to write that song on my Les Paul.”

Likewise, anyone living through the age of Covid-19 will feel a deep affinity with “2020”: a three-part symphony in which Ritenour takes the pulse of the times. “The three parts were a reflection of what was going on this year,” he nods, “when all of a sudden everybody’s life shut down. I was thinking about the young musicians that were out of work – and people in every walk of life.”

Elsewhere Dreamcatcher delves beyond the pandemic. While Ritenour strived to switch up musical styles – from the title track’s dovetailing classical guitars to the Taylor baritone that drives “Starlight’s” tumbling folk, and the mad scientist multi-tracking of “Couldn’t Help Myself” – he also ran the gamut of mood. “Because even I get tired,” he reasons, “of solo guitar albums when it pretty much all sounds the same.”

As such, “For DG” salutes the harmonic sensibilities of the great producer, pianist, and long-time comrade, Dave Grusin. But it couldn’t be further from “Charleston”, whose mellow slink is laced with bittersweet thoughts on the ebb and flow of US race relations. “A few years ago, I played in Charleston, South Carolina,” recalls Ritenour, “and it was charming and the people were warm, and it was a very mixed, soulful audience. Charleston has a history of the beginnings of slavery, but this was modernday Charleston, y’know? But then, a few years later, I’m writing this tune while watching the continuation of the struggle. As musicians who travel all over the world, we go, ‘What? This shit is still going on in the US?’ So it was appropriate to dedicate that song to Black Lives Matter.”

Dreamcatcher not only confronts the here-and-now: it also slips back into Ritenour’s rich history. Long-standing fans will recognize “Morning Glory Jam” as a rework of the guitarist’s classic 1977 tune. “On 2015’s A Twist Of Rit, I had revisited a lot of older material, so I wanted to keep this record fresh. But one day, I remembered when I did sessions for Barry White and how there had been four or five guitar players all playing these incredible rhythm parts. That’s the kind of groove I had in my head for this new version of Morning Glory.”

Casting his mind still further back, The Lighthouse shares its name with the storied LA jazz club where the teenage guitarist was to be found most nights in the mid-’60s. “I’d started playing guitar at eight, and by 12, I was very serious. Everybody’s number was in the phonebook back then, right? So my dad – who was an amateur piano player and always very supportive – called up Joe Pass and Barney Kessel and asked them to give me a guitar lesson. Barney ended up recommending this incredible teacher, Duke Miller, and that was the foundation of all my playing. The Lighthouse was this very funky jazz club where I met Wes Montgomery. By the age of 16, I’d take the car over there in the late afternoons and just watch the bands soundcheck.”

Whatever genre you were into, recalls Ritenour, the guitar scene at that magical juncture in the mid-’60s was hard to beat. “In every field, there were legends. In jazz, you had Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts, Jim Hall, Pat Martino. In Blues, B.B. King, Albert King, John Lee Hooker. In Rock, Jimi Hendrix was coming, Clapton and Beck were already there. In Country, you had Chet Atkins, and the all time great classical guitar master, Segovia, and Sabicas, and Paco de Lucia for Flamenco! Great guitar playing was everywhere you turned, and I loved them all…How could you not?

Those eclectic early tastes served Ritenour well. The jazz giants at The Lighthouse were a passion for life: just check out his love-letter to the great Mr Montgomery on 1993’s Wes Bound. But from the day he lucked into his first session for The Mamas And The Papas at age 16, Ritenour had the widescreen musicality to forge a career as one of LA’s busiest session men. “I remember John Phillips had this incredible studio in his Beverly Hills mansion and I just thought, ‘This is what I want’. As for my favorite and memorable sessions, I remember getting called by Bob Ezrin to record on “One Of My Turns” and “Comfortably Numb” on Pink Floyd’s, The Wall…incredible. And then there was Quincy Jones producing George Benson’s, “Give Me the Night” album and all of us waiting ‘til 4am for Stevie Wonder to show up and play a song he’d written for George’s album…Ha! Too many memories!”

Like close friend and fellow session ace, Toto’s Steve Lukather, Ritenour was always more than a gun-for-hire. In ’76, he launched his own solo career with First Course, and managed the magic trick of following his muse while finding enviable commercial success, especially in the ’80s. “On the West Coast, fusion was just starting,” he remembers, “and we were beginning to combine the melodies of pop music, bu...

Guitarist and composer, born in Montevideo, Uruguay on 20 September 1967. He moved to The Netherlands in 1990 and later to Rio de Janeiro, Brasil in 2002, where he among other performed with and recorded for Ivan Lins.